blob: 8b388325f425091fd476f241350fd9fcf654feef [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
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000015- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
16 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
17 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
18
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000019- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
20 configure would break checking curses.h.
21
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000022- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
23 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
24
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000025- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
26
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000027- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
28
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000029- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
30
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000031- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
32 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
33
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000034- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
35 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
36 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
37
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000038- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
39 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000040 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000041
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000042- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
43 now encodes backslash correctly.
44
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000045- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
46
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000047- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
48 and long longs.
49
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000050- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
51 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
52 message in this case.
53
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000054- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
55 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
56 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
57 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
58 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
59
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000060- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000061
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000062- Speed up some Unicode operations.
63
64- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
65
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000066- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000067 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
68
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000069- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
70
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000071- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
72 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
73
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000074- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
75
76- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
77
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000078- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
79 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
80 was empty.
81
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000082- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
83 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
84
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000085- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000086 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000087
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000088- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
89 codes.
90
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000091- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
92 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
93 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
94
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000095- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
96 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
97
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000098- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000099 (fixes bug #1119418).
100
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000101- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
102
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000103- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
104 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
105
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000106- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
107 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
108 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
109
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000110- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
111
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000112- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
113 reference counts in some error exit cases.
114
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000115- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
116 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
117 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
118 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
119 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
120 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
121 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
122 realloc.
123
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000124- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
125 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
126
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000127- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
128 like their int counterparts.
129
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000130- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
131 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
132 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
133 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
134 for a longer write-up of the problem).
135
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000136- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
137 serializing floats.
138
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000139- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
140 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
141 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
142
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000143- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
144 278.
145
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000146- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
147 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
148 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
149 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000150 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000151 PyNumber_*().
152 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
153
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000154- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
155 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
156 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
157 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
158
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000159- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
160 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
161 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
162 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
163 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
164
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000165- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
166 disabled caused a crash.
167
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000168- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
169 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
170
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000171- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000172 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
173
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000174- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
175
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000176- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000177 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
178 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
179 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000180
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000181- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
182
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000183- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
184 returning None.
185
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000186- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000187 ('\') with a specific error message.
188
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000189- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
190
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000191- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
192 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
193
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000194- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000195 an ferror() call.
196
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000197- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
198 list.sort().
199
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000200- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
201 (2+3) --> (5).
202
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000203- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
204
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000205- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
206 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000207
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000208- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
209 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
210 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
211
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000212- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
213 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
214 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
215
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000216Extension Modules
217-----------------
218
Neal Norwitz082b2df2006-02-07 07:04:46 +0000219- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
220 is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
221
Neal Norwitz0e6bc8c2006-02-05 05:45:43 +0000222- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
223 mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
224 mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
225
Martin v. Löwis57a34e82006-02-04 19:12:37 +0000226- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
227 than the system default domain.
228
Martin v. Löwis14694662006-02-03 12:54:16 +0000229- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
230 are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
231 WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
232
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000233- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
234
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000235- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
236 before the env.
237
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000238- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
239
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000240- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
241
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000242- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
243 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
244 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
245
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000246- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
247 without prior setting of the userptr.
248
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000249- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
250
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000251- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
252
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000253- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
254 problem on AIX.
255
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000256- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
257
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000258- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
259
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000260- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
261
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000262- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
263 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
264
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000265- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
266 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
267
268- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
269
270- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000271
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000272- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
273 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
274
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000275- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
276
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000277- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
278 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
279
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000280- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
281 returns in cStringIO.c.
282
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000283- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
284 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
285
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000286- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
287
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000288- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
289
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000290- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
291 the file system encoding.
292
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000293- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
294 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000295
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000296- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
297
298- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000299 line without newlines.
300
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000301- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
302 on Windows.
303
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000304- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000305 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
306
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000307- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
308 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
309 for large or negative values.
310
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000311- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000312 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000313
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000314- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
315
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000316- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
317 if available on the platform.
318
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000319- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
320 available on the platform.
321
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000322- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
323 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
324
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000325- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
326
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000327- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
328 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
329 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
330
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000331- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
332
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000333- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
334 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
335
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000336- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000337 file size.
338
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000339- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
340
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000341- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
342 {remove_history,replace_history}
343
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000344- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
345 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000346
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000347- stat_float_times is now True.
348
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000349- array.array objects are now picklable.
350
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000351- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
352 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
353
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000354- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
355 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
356 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
357
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000358- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
359 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000360
361Library
362-------
363
Martin v. Löwis00756902006-02-05 17:09:41 +0000364- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
365 unless the system is Win32.
366
Martin v. Löwisc81e3a62006-01-30 15:04:31 +0000367- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000368 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
369 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
370
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000371- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
372
373- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000374
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000375- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
376
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000377- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000378 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000379
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000380- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
381 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000382
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000383- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
384
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000385- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
386
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000387- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
388 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
389 LoadError subclasses IOError.
390
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000391- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000392 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
393 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
394 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
395 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
396
397 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
398 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
399 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
400 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
401 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000402
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000403- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
404 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
405 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
406
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000407- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
408
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000409- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
410
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000411- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
412 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
413 illegal argument)
414
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000415- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
416 is an error in the format string.
417
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000418- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
419
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000420- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000421 "parent" argument.
422
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000423- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
424 for padding.
425
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000426- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
427 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
428
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000429- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
430 to get the correct encoding.
431
432- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
433 languages.
434
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000435- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
436
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000437- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
438
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000439- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
440
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000441- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
442 functionality.
443
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000444- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
445
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000446- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
447 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
448
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000449- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
450 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
451 match the Content-Length header.
452
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000453- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
454
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000455- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
456 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000457 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000458
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000459- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
460
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000461- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
462
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000463- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
464 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
465
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000466- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
467 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
468 Tkdnd.
469
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000470- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
471 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
472
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000473- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
474 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
475
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000476- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000477 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
478
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000479- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
480 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
481
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000482- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
483 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
484
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000485- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000486 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000487
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000488- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
489
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000490- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
491 error messages.
492
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000493- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
494
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000495- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
496 Bug #1224621.
497
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000498- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
499 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
500 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
501 terminates by raising StopIteration.
502
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000503- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
504
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000505- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
506 component of the path.
507
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000508- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
509 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
510 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
511 class at all.
512
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000513- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
514 files to PyPI.
515
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000516- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
517 them to PyPI.
518
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000519- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
520 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
521 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
522 work as expected.
523
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000524- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
525 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
526
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000527- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000528 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
529
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000530- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
531
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000532- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
533 to build.
534
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000535- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
536 symbolic links on Windows.
537
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000538- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000539 profile.py if available.
540
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000541- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
542
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000543- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
544 in LWPCookieJar.
545
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000546- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
547
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000548- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
549
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000550- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
551
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000552- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
553
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000554- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
555
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000556- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
557
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000558- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
559
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000560- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
561
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000562- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
563 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
564 be exploited in various ways.
565
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000566- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000567 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
568
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000569- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
570 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
571
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000572- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000573 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
574
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000575- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
576
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000577- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
578
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000579- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
580
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000581- Enhancements to the csv module:
582
583 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000584 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000585 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000586 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
587 reporting.
588 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
589 dictates.
590 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000591 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000592 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000593 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
594 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000595 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
596 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000597 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000598 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
599 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
600 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
601 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
602 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
603 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
604 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
605 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
606 without first creating a dialect class.
607 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
608 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
609 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000610 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000611 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
612 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000613 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
614 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
615 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
616 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000617 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
618 This has been fixed.
619
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000620- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
621 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
622 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
623 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
624
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000625- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
626
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000627- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
628 (Bug #951915).
629
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000630- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
631 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
632 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000633 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000634
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000635- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
636
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000637- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
638 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
639
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000640- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
641
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000642- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
643
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000644- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
645
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000646- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
647
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000648- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
649
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000650- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
651 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
652 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
653
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000654- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000655 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000656
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000657- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
658 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
659 tokenizer with very long source lines.
660
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000661- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
662 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
663 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000664
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000665- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
666 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000667
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000668- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
669 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
670
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000671- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
672 correctly.
673
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000674- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
675 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
676 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
677 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
678 between two lines.
679
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000680- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
681 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
682 handlers.
683
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000684- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000685 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
686 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000687
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000688- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
689 considering it exactly like a '*'.
690
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000691- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
692 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000693
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000694- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
695
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000696- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
697 touch the recursion limit.
698
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000699Build
700-----
701
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000702- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
703
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000704- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
705 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
706
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000707- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
708
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000709- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
710 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
711
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000712- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
713 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
714
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000715- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
716 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
717 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000718 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000719
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000720- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
721 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
722 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
723
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000724- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
725
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000726- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
727 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
728
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000729- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
730 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
731 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
732 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
733 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
734 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
735 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
736 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
737
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000738- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
739 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
740 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
741 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
742
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000743C API
744-----
745
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000746- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
747
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000748- Removed PyRange_New().
749
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000750- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
751 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
752 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
753 mappings.
754
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000755
756Tests
757-----
758
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000759- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000760
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000761- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
762 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
763
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000764
765Documentation
766-------------
767
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000768- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
769
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000770- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
771 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
772
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000773- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
774
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000775- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
776
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000777- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
778
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000779- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
780
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000781- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
782
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000783- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
784
785- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
786
787- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
788
789- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
790
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000791- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
792 Closes bug #1166582.
793
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000794- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
795 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
796 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
797
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000798Mac
799---
800
801
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000802New platforms
803-------------
804
805- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
806
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000807
808Tools/Demos
809-----------
810
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000811- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
812 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
813 source files that need an encoding declaration.
814 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
815
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000816- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
817
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000818- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000819
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000820- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
821 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000822
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000823What's New in Python 2.4 final?
824===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000825
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000826*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000827
828Core and builtins
829-----------------
830
831- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
832 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
833 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
834
835
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000836What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
837==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000838
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000839*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000840
841Core and builtins
842-----------------
843
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000844- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
845 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
846 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
847
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000848
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000849Library
850-------
851
852- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
853 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
854 raised is re-raised.
855
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000856- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
857 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
858
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000859- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
860 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
861 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
862 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
863 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
864 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
865 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
866 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
867 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
868 by the slice are recomputed now.
869
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000870- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000871
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000872Build
873-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000874
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000875- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
876 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
877 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000878
879C API
880-----
881
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000882- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
883
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000884
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000885What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
886================================
887
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000888*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000889
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000890License
891-------
892
893The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
894is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
895changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
896Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
897intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
898durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
899the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
900License::
901
902 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
903
904says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
905to Python 2.1.1.
906
907The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
908License Version 2.
909
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000910Core and builtins
911-----------------
912
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000913- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
914 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
915 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
916 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
917 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
918 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
919 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000920 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000921 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
922 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
923
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000924- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000925
926Extension Modules
927-----------------
928
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000929- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
930 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
931 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
932 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000933
934Library
935-------
936
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000937- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
938 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
939 returned.
940
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000941- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
942
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000943- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
944 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
945
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000946- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
947
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000948- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
949 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000950
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000951- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
952
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000953- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
954
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000955- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000956 the source code is updated and reloaded.
957
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000958Build
959-----
960
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000961- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000962
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000963What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
964================================
965
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000966*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000967
968Core and builtins
969-----------------
970
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000971- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000972 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
973
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000974- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
975 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
976 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
977 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
978
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000979- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
980 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
981
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000982- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
983 constant.
984
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000985- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
986 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
987 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
988 large), and to anomalies such as
989 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
990 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
991 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
992 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000993
994Extension modules
995-----------------
996
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000997- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
998 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000999 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
1000 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
1001 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001002
1003Library
1004-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001005
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001006- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001007 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001008 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
1009 --swig-cpp.
1010
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +00001011- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
1012 it is set.
1013
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +00001014- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +00001015
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +00001016- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1017 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1018 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1019 Closes bug #1039270.
1020
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001021- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001022
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001023 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001024 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1025 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1026 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1027 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1028 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1029 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1030 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1031 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1032 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1033 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1034 + Updates to documentation.
1035
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001036- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1037 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1038 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1039 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1040
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001041- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001042
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001043- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1044 applications should use the getmember function.
1045
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001046- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1047
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001048- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1049 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1050 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1051 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1052 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1053 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1054 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1055 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1056 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1057
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001058- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1059 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001060 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001061
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001062- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1063 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1064 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1065 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1066 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1067 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1068 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1069 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001070
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001071- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1072 the new public features (of which there are many).
1073
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001074- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001075 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1076 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1077 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1078 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001079 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001080
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001081- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1082
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001083- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1084 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1085 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1086 options.
1087
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001088- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1089 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1090 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1091 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1092 conditions under which non-string values work.
1093
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001094Build
1095-----
1096
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001097- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1098 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1099 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1100
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001101- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1102 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1103 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1104 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1105 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001106
1107C API
1108-----
1109
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001110- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1111 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1112
1113- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1114
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001115- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1116 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1117 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1118 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1119 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1120 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1121 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1122 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1123 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1124
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001125- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1126
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001127- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1128 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1129 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001130
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001131Tests
1132-----
1133
1134- test__locale ported to unittest
1135
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001136Mac
1137---
1138
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001139- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1140 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1141 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001142
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001143Tools/Demos
1144-----------
1145
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001146- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1147 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1148 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1149 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1150 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001151
1152
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001153What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1154=================================
1155
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001156*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001157
1158Core and builtins
1159-----------------
1160
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001161- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001162 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1163
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001164- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1165 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1166 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1167 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1168 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1169 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1170 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1171 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001172 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1173 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1174 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1175 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1176 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001177
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001178- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1179 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1180 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1181 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1182 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1183
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001184- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1185
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001186- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1187 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1188
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001189- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1190 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1191 modified the list.
1192
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001193- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1194 functions is now writable.
1195
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001196- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1197 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1198 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1199 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1200
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001201- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1202 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1203 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1204 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1205 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001206
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001207- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1208 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1209
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001210Extension modules
1211-----------------
1212
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001213- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1214
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001215- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1216 data.
1217
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001218- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1219 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1220 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1221 supposed to have been truncated away.
1222
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001223- Added socket.socketpair().
1224
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001225- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1226 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1227
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001228- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001229 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1230
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001231Library
1232-------
1233
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001234- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001235 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001236
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001237- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1238 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1239
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001240- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1241 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1242
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001243- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1244
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001245- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1246 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001247
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001248- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1249 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1250
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001251- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1252
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001253- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1254
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001255- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1256
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001257- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1258 Percivall.
1259
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001260- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1261 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1262
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001263- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1264 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1265 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001266 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001267
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001268- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1269 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1270 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1271 and exponent.
1272
1273- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1274
1275- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001276 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001277 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1278
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001279- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1280 to the readline module.
1281
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001282- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001283 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1284 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001285
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001286- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1287 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1288 contains symlinks.
1289
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001290- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1291 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1292
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001293- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1294 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1295 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1296
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001297- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1298 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1299 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1300 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1301 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1302 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1303 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1304 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1305 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1306 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1307 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1308 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1309 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1310
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001311- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1312
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001313Tools/Demos
1314-----------
1315
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001316- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1317 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1318
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001319- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1320
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001321Build
1322-----
1323
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001324- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1325 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1326 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1327 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1328 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1329 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1330 plans to do so.
1331
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001332- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1333 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1334
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001335- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1336 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1337
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001338- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1339 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1340
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001341- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1342 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1343
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001344- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1345 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1346
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001347C API
1348-----
1349
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001350..
1351
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001352Documentation
1353-------------
1354
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001355- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1356 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1357
1358- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1359 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1360 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001361
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001362New platforms
1363-------------
1364
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001365- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1366
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001367Tests
1368-----
1369
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001370..
1371
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001372Windows
1373-------
1374
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001375- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1376 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1377 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1378 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1379 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1380 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1381 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1382 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1383 the problem.
1384
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001385Mac
1386---
1387
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001388..
1389
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001390
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001391What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1392=================================
1393
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001394*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001395
1396Core and builtins
1397-----------------
1398
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001399- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1400 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1401 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1402 sensitive code.
1403
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001404- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001405 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001406
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001407 @staticmethod
1408 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001409
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001410 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001411
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001412- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1413 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1414 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1415 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1416 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1417 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1418 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1419 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1420 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1421 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1422 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1423
1424 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1425 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1426 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1427 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1428 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1429 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1430 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1431
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001432- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1433 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1434
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001435- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001436 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001437
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001438- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001439 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001440 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1441
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001442- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001443 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1444 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1445
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001446- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1447 types that support garbage collection.
1448
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001449- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1450
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001451- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1452 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1453 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1454 Jython.
1455
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001456- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1457
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001458- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1459 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1460
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001461- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1462 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1463 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001464
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001465- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1466 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1467 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1468
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001469Extension modules
1470-----------------
1471
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001472- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1473
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001474Library
1475-------
1476
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001477- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1478 TIS-620
1479
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001480- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1481 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1482 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1483 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1484 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1485 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1486 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1487 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1488 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1489 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1490
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001491- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1492
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001493- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1494 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1495 same as when the argument is omitted).
1496 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1497
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001498- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1499
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001500- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1501 schemes are offered.
1502
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001503- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1504
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001505- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1506 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1507 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1508
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001509- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1510
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001511- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1512 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1513
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001514- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1515 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1516 when dummy_threading is being used.
1517
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001518- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1519 from a tarfile.
1520
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001521- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001522 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001523
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001524- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1525 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1526 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1527 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1528
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001529- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1530 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1531
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001532- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1533 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1534 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1535 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1536 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1537 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1538 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1539 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1540 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1541 by some other method in progress).
1542
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001543- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1544 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1545 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001546
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001547- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1548
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001549- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1550 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1551 AM Kuchling.
1552
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001553- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1554 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1555 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1556
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001557- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1558 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1559 instead of unsigned.
1560
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001561- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001562 no longer part of the public API.
1563
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001564- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1565 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1566 string methods of the same name).
1567
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001568- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001569 SF patch 945642.
1570
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001571- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1572
1573 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1574
1575 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1576 DocTestSuites.
1577
1578- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1579 that provide thread-local data.
1580
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001581- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1582 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1583
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001584- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1585
1586- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1587 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1588 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1589
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001590- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1591
1592 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1593 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1594 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001595
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001596 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1597 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1598 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1599 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1600
1601 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1602 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1603
1604 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1605 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1606 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1607 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1608
1609 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1610 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1611 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1612 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1613 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1614
1615 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1616 wrapping help output.
1617
1618 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1619 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1620 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001621
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001622C API
1623-----
1624
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001625- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1626 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1627 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1628 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1629 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1630 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1631 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1632 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1633 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1634 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1635 its visible semantics have not changed.
1636
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001637- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1638 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1639
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001640Documentation
1641-------------
1642
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001643- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001644
1645 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001646 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001647
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001648 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001649
1650 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1651
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001652- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001653
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001654Tests
1655-----
1656
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001657- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001658 platforms that use the Makefile.
1659
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001660- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1661 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1662 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1663
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001664
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001665What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1666=================================
1667
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001668*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001669
1670Core and builtins
1671-----------------
1672
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001673- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1674 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1675 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1676 objects now (one object instead of three).
1677
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001678- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1679 Windows DLLs.
1680
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001681- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1682 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001683
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001684- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1685 a new .pyc magic.
1686
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001687- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1688 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1689 be there.
1690
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001691- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1692 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1693 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1694
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001695- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1696 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1697 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1698
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001699- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1700
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001701- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1702 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1703 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001704
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001705- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1706 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1707
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001708- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1709
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001710- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001711 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001712
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001713- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1714
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001715- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1716
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001717- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1718 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1719
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001720- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1721 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1722 Fixes bug #858016 .
1723
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001724- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1725 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1726 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1727
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001728- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1729 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1730 improves their performance (about 35%).
1731
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001732- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1733 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1734 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1735
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001736- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1737 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1738 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1739 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1740
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001741- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1742 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001743 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001744 length is not known).
1745
1746- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1747 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001748 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1749 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001750 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1751
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001752- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1753 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1754
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001755- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1756 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1757 keyword arguments.
1758
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001759- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1760 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1761 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1762
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001763- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1764 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1765 cases.
1766
1767- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1768 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1769 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1770 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1771 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1772 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1773 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1774 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1775 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1776 a release build.
1777
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001778- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1779 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1780
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001781- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001782 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001783
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001784- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1785 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1786 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1787 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1788 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1789 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1790 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1791 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1792 destroyed.
1793
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001794- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1795 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1796 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1797 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1798 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1799 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1800 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1801 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1802
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001803- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1804 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1805 character other than a space.
1806
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001807- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1808 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1809 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1810 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1811 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1812 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1813 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1814 attributes with the same name.
1815
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001816- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1817 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1818 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1819 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1820 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1821 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1822 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1823 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1824 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1825 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1826 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1827 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1828 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1829 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001830
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001831- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1832 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1833 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1834 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1835 This has been repaired.
1836
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001837- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1838
1839- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1840
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001841- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1842 over a sequence.
1843
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001844- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001845 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001846
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001847- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1848
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001849- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1850 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1851 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1852 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1853 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1854 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1855 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1856 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1857
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001858- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1859 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1860 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1861
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001862- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1863 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1864 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1865 freelist.
1866
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001867- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1868 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1869
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001870- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1871 number.
1872
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001873- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1874 a TypeError exception.
1875
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001876- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1877 820195.
1878
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001879- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1880 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1881 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1882
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001883- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001884 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1885 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001886
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001887- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1888 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1889 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1890
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001891- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1892 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001893 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001894
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001895- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001896 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1897 the first call.
1898
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001899
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001900Extension modules
1901-----------------
1902
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001903- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1904 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1905
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001906- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1907 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1908 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1909 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1910 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1911 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1912 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001913
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001914- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1915
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001916- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1917
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001918- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1919 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1920
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001921- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1922 fewer false positives.
1923
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001924- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1925 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1926
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001927- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001928 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1929
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001930- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001931 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001932 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001933 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1934 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001935
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001936- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1937 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1938 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1939 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1940
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001941- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1942 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1943 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1944 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1945 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1946 #897625.
1947
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001948- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1949 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1950
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001951- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1952 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1953 and pops on either side of the deque.
1954
1955- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1956 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1957
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001958- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1959 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1960 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1961 other functions that expect a function argument.
1962
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001963- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1964
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001965- os.getsid was added.
1966
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001967- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1968 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1969 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1970
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001971- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1972
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001973- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1974
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001975- readline.clear_history was added.
1976
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001977- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1978
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001979- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1980
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001981- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1982
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001983- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1984
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001985- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1986
1987- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1988
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001989- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1990
1991- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1992
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001993- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1994 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1995 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1996
1997- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1998 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1999 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
2000 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
2001 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
2002 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
2003 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
2004
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00002005- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
2006 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
2007 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
2008 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002009
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002010- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002011 iterators from a single iterable.
2012
2013- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
2014 of raising a TypeError exception.
2015
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00002016- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2017 as parameter.
2018
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002019Library
2020-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002021
Armin Rigoa871ef22006-02-08 12:53:56 +00002022- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
2023 profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
2024 profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
2025 Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
2026
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002027- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2028
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002029- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2030 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2031 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002032
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002033- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2034 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2035 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002036
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002037- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002038
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002039- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2040 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002041
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002042- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2043 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2044
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002045- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2046
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002047- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002048 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002049
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002050- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002051 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002052
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002053- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2054
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002055- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2056 on cygwin and mingw32.
2057
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002058- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2059
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002060- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2061 module.
2062
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002063- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2064 installation scheme for all platforms.
2065
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002066- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002067 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002068
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002069- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2070 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2071 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2072
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002073- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2074 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2075 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2076
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002077- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2078
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002079- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2080
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002081- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2082 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2083
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002084- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2085 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2086 type pattern with the same value exists.
2087
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002088- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2089 when run from the command prompt).
2090
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002091- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2092 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2093
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002094- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2095 default sort).
2096
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002097- Added global runctx function to profile module
2098
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002099- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2100
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002101- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2102
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002103- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2104
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002105- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002106 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2107 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2108 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2109 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2110 accordingly.
2111
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002112- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2113 decoding standards.
2114
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002115- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2116 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2117 called for all requests.
2118
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002119- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2120 they are passed to the compiler.
2121
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002122- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2123 indent, width and depth.
2124
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002125- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2126 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2127
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002128- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2129 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2130
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002131- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2132
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002133- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2134
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002135- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2136
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002137- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2138 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2139
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002140- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002141 for better performance.
2142
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002143- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002144
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002145- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2146 a string).
2147
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002148- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2149
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002150- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2151
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002152- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2153
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002154- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2155
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002156- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2157 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2158 list of fieldnames.
2159
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002160- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2161 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2162
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002163- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2164
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002165- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2166 empty lists.
2167
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002168- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2169 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2170 and shelves.
2171
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002172- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2173 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2174
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002175- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002176 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2177 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002178
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002179- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2180 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002181 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002182
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002183- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002184 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2185 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2186
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002187- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2188 and removed in Py2.4.
2189
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002190- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2191
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002192- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2193
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002194Tools/Demos
2195-----------
2196
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002197- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2198 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2199
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002200- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2201
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002202- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2203 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2204 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2205 destination in situations where both files are given.
2206
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002207- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2208 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2209 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2210 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2211
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002212- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2213
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002214- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2215 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2216 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2217 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2218 now.
2219
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002220- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2221 in effect
2222
2223- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2224 C-c C-h
2225
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002226- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2227 -d option was given.
2228
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002229Build
2230-----
2231
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002232- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2233 build under OS X.
2234
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002235- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2236 --enable-profiling.
2237
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002238- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2239 is configured --with-tsc.
2240
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002241- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2242 on AMD64.
2243
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002244- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2245 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2246
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002247- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2248 removed.
2249
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002250- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2251 supported (see PEP 11).
2252
2253- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2254
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002255- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2256
2257- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2258 (see PEP 11).
2259
2260- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2261 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2262
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002263C API
2264-----
2265
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002266- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2267 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2268 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2269
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002270- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2271 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2272 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2273 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2274
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002275- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2276 generator objects.
2277
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002278- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2279 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002280 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2281 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002282
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002283- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2284 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2285
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002286- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2287 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2288 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2289 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2290 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2291
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002292- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2293 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2294 about 10% faster.
2295
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002296- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2297 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2298
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002299- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2300 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2301 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2302 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2303
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002304Windows
2305-------
2306
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002307- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2308 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2309 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2310 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2311
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002312- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2313 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2314 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2315
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002316
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002317What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2318===============================
2319
2320*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2321
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002322IDLE
2323----
2324
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002325- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2326 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2327 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2328 context-menu actions.
2329
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002330- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2331 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2332 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2333 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2334 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2335 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2336 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2337 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2338 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2339
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002340
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002341What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2342=============================================
2343
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002344*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002345
2346Core and builtins
2347-----------------
2348
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002349- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002350 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002351 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2352
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002353Extension modules
2354-----------------
2355
2356- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2357 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2358 than once. This has been fixed.
2359
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002360- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2361 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2362 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2363 call.
2364
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002365- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2366
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002367Library
2368-------
2369
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002370- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2371 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2372
2373- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2374 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2375 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2376 restored.
2377
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002378IDLE
2379----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002380
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002381- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002382
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002383Build
2384-----
2385
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002386- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2387 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2388
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002389C API
2390-----
2391
2392Windows
2393-------
2394
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002395- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2396 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2397
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002398- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2399
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002400Mac
2401---
2402
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002403- Various fixes to pimp.
2404
2405- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2406
2407- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2408 more problems than it solves.
2409
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002410
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002411What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2412=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002413
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002414*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2415
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002416Core and builtins
2417-----------------
2418
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002419- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2420 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2421
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002422- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2423 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002424 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002425
2426- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2427 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2428 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002429 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002430
2431- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2432 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002433
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002434- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2435 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2436 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2437
2438- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002439 770247.
2440
2441- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002442
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002443Extension modules
2444-----------------
2445
2446- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2447 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2448
2449- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2450
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002451- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2452
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002453- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2454 contained within the _strptime module.
2455
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002456- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2457 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2458
2459- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002460 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2461
2462- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2463 the find_class attribute, if present.
2464
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002465- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002466
2467 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2468 (SF bug 763298).
2469
2470 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002471 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2472 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2473 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002474
2475 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2476
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002477Library
2478-------
2479
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002480- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2481
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002482- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2483 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2484 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2485 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2486 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2487 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2488 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2489 or Tester().
2490
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002491- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2492 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2493 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2494 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2495 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2496 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2497 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2498 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2499 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002500
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002501 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002502
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002503- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2504 weren't before was an oversight.
2505
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002506- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2507 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2508
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002509- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2510 when there are no lines.
2511
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002512- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2513 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2514
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002515- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2516 to child processes.
2517
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002518- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2519
2520- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2521
2522- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2523 xmlrpclib.
2524
2525- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2526 responses.
2527
2528- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2529 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2530
2531- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2532 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2533 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2534
2535- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2536 used as patterns.
2537
2538- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2539 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2540 than Tk 8.3.
2541
2542- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2543
2544- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002545
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002546Tools/Demos
2547-----------
2548
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002549- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2550
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002551- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2552
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002553- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002554
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002555Build
2556-----
2557
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002558- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2559
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002560- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2561
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002562- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2563 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002564
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002565- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2566 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2567 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002568
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002569C API
2570-----
2571
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002572- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2573 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2574
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002575Windows
2576-------
2577
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002578- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2579 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2580 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2581 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2582 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2583 Python exception ::
2584
2585 thread.error: can't start new thread
2586
2587 is raised now.
2588
2589- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2590 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2591 instead of from DLL teardown.
2592
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002593Mac
2594---
2595
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002596- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002597 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002598 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2599 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2600 the executable in the bundle.
2601
2602- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002603
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002604- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2605
2606- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2607 on Panther.
2608
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002609What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2610================================
2611
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002612*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002613
2614Core and builtins
2615-----------------
2616
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002617- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2618 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2619 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2620 with the -i option.
2621
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002622- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2623 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2624
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002625- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2626 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2627
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002628- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2629 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2630 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2631 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2632 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2633 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2634 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2635 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2636 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2637 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2638 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2639 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2640 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002641
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002642- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2643 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2644 embedded in a lambda expression.
2645
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002646- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2647 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2648 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2649 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2650 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2651
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002652- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2653 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2654 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2655
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002656- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2657 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2658
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002659- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2660 It's writable again.
2661
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002662- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2663 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2664 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002665 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002666
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002667- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2668 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2669 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2670
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002671Extension modules
2672-----------------
2673
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002674- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2675 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2676
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002677- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2678 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2679 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2680 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2681
2682- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2683 collection.
2684
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002685- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2686 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2687 unique within a single program run.
2688
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002689- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2690 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2691
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002692- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2693 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2694
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002695- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2696 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002697
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002698- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2699
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002700- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2701 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2702
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002703- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2704 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2705 for many BSD-derived systems.
2706
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002707
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002708Library
2709-------
2710
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002711- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2712 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2713 primary ones:
2714
2715 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2716 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2717 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2718
2719 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2720 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2721 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2722 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2723 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2724 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2725
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002726- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2727 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2728 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2729 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2730 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2731 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2732 argument.
2733
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002734- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2735 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2736 in the archive.
2737
2738- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2739 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2740
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002741- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2742 569574).
2743
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002744- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2745 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2746 no more.
2747
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002748- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2749 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2750 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2751 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2752 code coverage.
2753
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002754- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2755 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2756 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002757 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2758 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002759
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002760- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2761 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2762 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002763 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002764
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002765- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2766
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002767- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2768 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2769 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2770 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2771
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002772- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2773 handling.
2774
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002775- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2776 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2777
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002778- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2779 in socket.py.
2780
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002781- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2782
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002783- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2784 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2785 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2786 opener with proxy support.
2787
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002788- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2789
2790- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2791
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002792Tools/Demos
2793-----------
2794
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002795- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2796
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002797- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2798
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002799- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2800 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002801
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002802- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2803 files.
2804
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002805Build
2806-----
2807
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002808- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002809 different root directory.
2810
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002811C API
2812-----
2813
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002814- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2815 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2816 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2817 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2818 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2819 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2820 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2821 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2822 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2823 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2824
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002825- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2826 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2827 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2828 from Python.
2829
2830
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002831New platforms
2832-------------
2833
2834None this time.
2835
2836Tests
2837-----
2838
2839- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2840 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2841
2842Windows
2843-------
2844
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002845- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2846
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002847- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2848 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2849 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2850 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2851 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2852 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2853 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2854 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2855 that's what it's for.
2856
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002857Mac
2858---
2859
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002860- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2861 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2862 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2863 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002864- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2865 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2866- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002867
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002868SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2869------------------------------------
2870
2871430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2872598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2873622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2874661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2875683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2876697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2877713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2878724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2879727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2880729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2881730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2882731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2883732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2884733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2885735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2886740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2887744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2888745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2889747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2890749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2891751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2892753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2893755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2894757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2895760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2896
2897
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002898What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2899================================
2900
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002901*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002902
2903Core and builtins
2904-----------------
2905
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002906- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2907 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2908
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002909- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2910 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2911 and cannot be strings).
2912
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002913- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2914 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2915 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2916 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2917
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002918- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2919 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2920 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2921 Python itself.
2922
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002923- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2924 the referenced object, if it has one.
2925
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002926- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2927 the thread started at
2928 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2929
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002930- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2931 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2932 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2933 placed on a list index.
2934
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002935- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2936 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2937 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2938 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2939
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002940- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2941 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2942 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2943 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2944 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2945 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2946 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2947
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002948- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2949 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2950 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2951 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2952 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2953
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002954- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2955 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002956
2957- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2958 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2959 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2960 #693195.)
2961
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002962- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2963 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002964
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002965- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002966 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002967 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2968 interpreter executions, would fail.
2969
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002970- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002971 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002972 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002973
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002974Extension modules
2975-----------------
2976
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002977- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2978 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2979 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2980 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2981
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002982- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2983 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2984
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002985- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2986 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2987 and Greg Chapman.)
2988
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002989- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2990 recursively.
2991
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002992- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002993 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2994 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2995 leaks.
2996
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002997- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2998
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002999- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
3000 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
3001 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
3002 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
3003 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
3004 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
3005 #705836.
3006
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00003007- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00003008 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
3009
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00003010- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
3011 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
3012 See SF bug #692416.
3013
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00003014- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
3015 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
3016
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00003017- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
3018 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
3019 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003020
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003021- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003022 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3023 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3024
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003025- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3026 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3027 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3028 timeouts to work properly.
3029
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003030Library
3031-------
3032
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003033- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3034 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3035 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3036 future release.
3037
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003038- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3039 for querying platform dependent features.
3040
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003041- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003042
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003043- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3044 pickle protocol versions.
3045
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003046- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3047 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3048 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3049
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003050- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3051
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003052- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3053 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3054 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3055 modules.
3056
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003057- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3058 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3059 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3060
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003061- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3062 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3063
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003064- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3065 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3066 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3067
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003068- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003069 MS Office extensions.
3070
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003071- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3072 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3073
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003074- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3075 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3076
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003077- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3078 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3079 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3080 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3081 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3082 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3083
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003084- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3085 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3086 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003087
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003088- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3089 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3090 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3091
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003092- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3093
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003094- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3095 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3096 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3097
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003098Tools/Demos
3099-----------
3100
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003101- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3102 See the module docstring for details.
3103
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003104Build
3105-----
3106
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003107- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3108 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003109
3110C API
3111-----
3112
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003113- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3114
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003115- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3116 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3117 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3118
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003119- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3120 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003121
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003122 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3123 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3124 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003125
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003126- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003127 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3128
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003129- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3130 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3131 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003132
3133New platforms
3134-------------
3135
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003136None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003137
3138Tests
3139-----
3140
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003141- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3142 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003143
3144Windows
3145-------
3146
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003147- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3148 function.
3149
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003150- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3151 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003152
3153Mac
3154---
3155
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003156- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3157 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003158
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003159- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3160 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003161
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003162- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3163 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3164 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003165
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003166- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003167 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3168 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003169
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003170- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3171 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003172
3173
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003174What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3175=================================
3176
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003177*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003178
3179Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003180-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003181
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003182- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3183 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3184 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3185
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003186- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3187 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3188 (SF patch #664376.)
3189
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003190- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3191 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3192 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3193 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3194 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3195 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003196 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003197
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003198- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3199 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3200 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3201 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003202 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003203
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003204- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3205 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3206 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3207 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3208 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3209 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3210 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3211 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3212 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3213 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3214 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3215
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003216- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3217 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3218 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3219 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3220 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3221 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3222
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003223- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3224 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3225
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003226- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3227 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3228 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3229 case.)
3230
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003231- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3232 passed as unicode strings.
3233
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003234- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3235 See SF bug #683467.
3236
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003237- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3238 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3239
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003240- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3241
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003242- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3243
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003244- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3245 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3246 arguments.
3247
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003248- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3249 See SF bug #667147.
3250
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003251- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003252 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003253 See SF bug #676155.
3254
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003255- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003256 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003257 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3258 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3259 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3260 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3261 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3262 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003263
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003264Extension modules
3265-----------------
3266
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003267- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3268 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3269 tp_as_number pointer.
3270
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003271- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3272 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3273 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3274 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3275 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3276
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003277- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3278
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003279- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3280
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003281- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003282 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003283 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3284 patch #678531.)
3285
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003286- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3287 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3288
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003289- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3290 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3291
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003292- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3293
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003294- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3295 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3296 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3297
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003298- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3299
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003300- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3301 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3302
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003303- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003304
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003305- datetime changes:
3306
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003307 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3308
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003309 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3310 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3311 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3312 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3313 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3314 now.
3315
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003316 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003317 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3318 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003319
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003320 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003321 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003322 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3323 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3324 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3325 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003326
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003327 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3328 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3329 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003330 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3331
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003332 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3333 by a later example coded by Guido.
3334
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003335 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003336 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3337 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3338 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003339 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3340 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3341
3342 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3343 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3344 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3345 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3346 tzinfo subclass instance.
3347
3348 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3349 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3350 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3351 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3352 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3353 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3354 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3355 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003356
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003357 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3358 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3359 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3360 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3361 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003362 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3363
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003364 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003365
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003366 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3367 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3368 as a naive datetime object.
3369
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003370 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3371 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3372 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3373
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003374 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3375 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3376 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3377 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3378 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3379 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3380 comparison.
3381
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003382 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3383 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3384 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3385 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003386 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003387
3388 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003389
3390 and ::
3391
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003392 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3393
3394 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3395 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3396 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3397 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3398
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003399 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3400 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3401 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3402 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3403 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3404
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003405 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3406 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003407 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3408 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003409
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003410Library
3411-------
3412
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003413- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3414 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3415
3416- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3417 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3418 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3419 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3420 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3421 See PEP 307 for details.
3422
3423- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3424 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3425
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003426- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3427 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003428 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003429 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3430 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003431 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003432
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003433- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3434 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3435
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003436- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3437 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3438 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3439
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003440- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3441
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003442- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3443 exception.
3444
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003445- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3446 class.
3447
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003448- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3449 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3450 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3451
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003452- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3453 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3454
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003455- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003456 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3457 See SF bug #659228.
3458
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003459- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3460 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3461 See SF patch #651082.
3462
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003463- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003464
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003465- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3466 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3467
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003468- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003469 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003470
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003471- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3472 DOS paths from other platforms.
3473
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003474Tools/Demos
3475-----------
3476
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003477- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3478 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3479 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3480 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3481 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3482 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3483 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3484 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3485 example:
3486
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003487 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3488 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003489
3490 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3491
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003492
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003493Build
3494-----
3495
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003496- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3497 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3498 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003499 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3500
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003501 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3502
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003503- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3504 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3505 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3506 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3507 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3508 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3509 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3510 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3511 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3512
3513- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3514 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3515 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3516 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3517
3518- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3519 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3520
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003521C API
3522-----
3523
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003524- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3525 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003526
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003527- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3528 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3529 tp_as_number pointer.
3530
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003531- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3532 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3533 (SF #681367)
3534
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003535- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3536 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3537 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3538 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003539
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003540Tests
3541-----
3542
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003543- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003544 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3545 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3546 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3547 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3548 pydoc.)
3549
3550- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3551
3552- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003553
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003554Windows
3555-------
3556
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003557- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3558 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3559 time).
3560
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003561- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3562 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3563
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003564- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3565 release without strong cryptography.
3566
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003567- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003568 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003569
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003570- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3571 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3572
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003573Mac
3574---
3575
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003576- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3577 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003578
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003579- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3580 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3581 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003582
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003583- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3584 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003585
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003586- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3587 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3588 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3589 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003590
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003591- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003592 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3593 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3594 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003595
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003596
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003597What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003598=================================
3599
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003600*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003601
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003602Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003603--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003604
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003605- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3606
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003607- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3608 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003609 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003610 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003611 a different meaning than before.
3612
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003613- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003614 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003615 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003616
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003617- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003618 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003619 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003620
3621- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3622 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3623 and deallocation.
3624
3625- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3626 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3627
3628- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3629 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3630 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3631 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3632 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3633
3634- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3635 now detected by the garbage collector.
3636
3637- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3638 [SF bug 519621]
3639
3640- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3641 identifier.
3642
3643- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3644 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3645 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3646 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3647 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3648 [SF bug 563060]
3649
3650- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3651 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3652 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3653 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3654 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3655
3656- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3657 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3658 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3659
3660- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3661
3662- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3663 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3664 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3665 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3666 state of the slots would be lost.)
3667
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003668Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003669-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003670
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003671- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003672 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3673 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3674 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3675 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003676 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3677 Jython 2.1.
3678
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003679- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003680 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003681 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3682 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3683 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3684 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3685 these, see PEP 302.
3686
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003687- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3688 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3689 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3690
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003691- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3692 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3693 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3694
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003695- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3696 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3697 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3698
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003699- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3700 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3701 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3702 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3703 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3704 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3705 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3706 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3707 releases or implementations.
3708
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003709- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003710 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3711 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003712
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003713- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3714 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3715
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003716- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3717 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3718 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3719
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003720- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3721 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3722
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003723- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3724 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003725 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3726 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003727
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003728- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3729 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3730 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3731 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3732 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3733
3734 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3735 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3736 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3737 pattern.
3738
3739 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3740 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3741 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3742 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3743
3744 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3745 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3746 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3747 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3748 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3749 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3750
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003751- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3752 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3753 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3754 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3755 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3756 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3757 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3758 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003759
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003760- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3761 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3762 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3763 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3764 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003765 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3766 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3767 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3768 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3769 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3770 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3771 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003772
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003773- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3774 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3775
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003776- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3777 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3778 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3779 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3780 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3781 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3782 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3783 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3784 to Zack Weinberg!
3785
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003786- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3787 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3788 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3789 type. This has been fixed now.
3790
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003791- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3792 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3793 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3794
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003795- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3796 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3797 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3798 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3799 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3800 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3801 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3802 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003803 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003804
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003805- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3806 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3807 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003808
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003809- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3810 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3811 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3812 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3813 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3814 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3815 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3816 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003817 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003818 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3819 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3820
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003821- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3822 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3823 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3824 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3825 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3826 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3827 this.)
3828
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003829- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3830 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003831 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003832 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003833 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3834 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003835 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3836 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003837
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003838- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3839 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3840 currently running.
3841
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003842- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3843 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3844 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3845 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3846
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003847- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3848 as directory names.
3849
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003850- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3851 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3852
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003853- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3854 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3855
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003856- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003857 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3858 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003859
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003860- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3861 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3862 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3863 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3864 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3865
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003866- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3867 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3868 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3869 removed.
3870
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003871- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3872 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3873 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3874
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003875- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3876 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3877 to __debug__.
3878
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003879- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3880 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3881 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3882
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003883- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3884 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3885 deprecated now.
3886
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003887- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3888 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3889 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003890
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003891- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3892 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3893 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3894 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3895 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003896
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003897- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3898 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3899
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003900- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3901 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3902 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003903 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003904 is backward compatible.
3905
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003906- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3907 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3908 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3909 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3910 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3911
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003912- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3913 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3914 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3915 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3916 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3917 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003918
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003919- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3920 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3921
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003922- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3923 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3924
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003925- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3926 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3927 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3928 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3929 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3930
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003931- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3932 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3933 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3934
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003935- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003936 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3937
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003938- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3939 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3940 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003941
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003942- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3943 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3944
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003945- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3946 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3947 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3948
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003949- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3950
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003951Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003952-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003953
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003954- Added three operators to the operator module:
3955 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3956 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3957 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3958
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003959- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3960
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003961- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3962 archives.
3963
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003964- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3965 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3966 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3967
3968 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3969
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003970- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3971 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3972 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003973 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003974
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003975- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3976 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3977 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3978 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003979 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3980 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3981 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3982 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003983
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003984- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3985 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003986
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003987- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3988
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003989- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3990 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3991
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003992- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3993 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3994 supported.
3995
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003996- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3997
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003998- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3999 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00004000
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00004001- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
4002 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
4003
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00004004- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
4005
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004006- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
4007 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
4008
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00004009- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
4010 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
4011 functions but callable type objects.
4012
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004013- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004014 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004015 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004016
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00004017- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
4018 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00004019
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00004020- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
4021 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004022
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004023- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4024 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4025 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4026 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4027
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004028- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4029 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004030
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004031- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4032 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4033 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4034 and __imul__.
4035
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004036- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004037 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4038 is called.
4039
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004040- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4041 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4042 interpreter was compiled.
4043
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004044- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4045 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4046 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004047 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004048 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4049 1, not 2.
4050
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004051- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4052 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4053 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4054 limit.
4055
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004056- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4057 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4058 bug #623464.
4059
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004060- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4061 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4062 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4063 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4064
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004065Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004066-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004067
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004068- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4069
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004070- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4071 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4072 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4073 with Python 2.3a2.
4074
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004075- os.path exposes getctime.
4076
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004077- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004078 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004079 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004080 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004081 unit tests of floating point results.
4082
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004083- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4084 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4085 has been increased.
4086
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004087- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4088 executed.
4089
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004090- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4091 postinstallation script.
4092
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004093- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4094 test the current module.
4095
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004096- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004097 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4098 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4099 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4100 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4101
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004102- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004103 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004104 Ward's Optik package.
4105
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004106- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4107 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4108 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4109 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4110
4111- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4112 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004113 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004114
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004115- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4116 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4117 shelf are binary pickles.
4118
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004119- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4120 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4121
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004122- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4123 modules are iterators now.
4124
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004125- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4126 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4127 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4128 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4129 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4130 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004131
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004132- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4133 with their entity value.
4134
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004135- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4136
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004137- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4138 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004139
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004140- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4141 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004142 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004143
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004144- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4145 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4146 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4147 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4148 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4149 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4150 main():
4151
4152 import locale
4153 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4154
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004155- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4156 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4157
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004158- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4159 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4160 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4161 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4162 to the new standard.
4163
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004164- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4165 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4166 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4167 an extension to the database.
4168
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004169- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4170 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4171 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4172 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004173 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004174
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004175- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004176 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004177
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004178- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4179 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4180 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4181 bounded integers.
4182
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004183- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4184 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4185 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4186 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4187 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4188 in existence.
4189
4190 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4191 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4192 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4193 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4194 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4195 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4196
4197 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4198 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4199 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4200 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4201
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004202- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4203 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4204 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4205
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004206- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4207
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004208- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4209 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4210 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4211 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4212
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004213- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4214 argument.
4215
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004216- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4217 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4218 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4219 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4220 [SF patch 560794].
4221
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004222- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4223 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4224 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004225 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4226 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4227 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004228
4229- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4230 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004231
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004232- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4233 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4234 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4235 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004236
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004237- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4238 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4239 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4240 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4241 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4242
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004243- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004244
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004245- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4246
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004247- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4248 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4249 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4250 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4251 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4252 identical to None.
4253
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004254- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4255 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4256 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4257 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4258 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4259 results now.
4260
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004261- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4262 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4263
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004264- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4265 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4266 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4267 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4268 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4269 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4270 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4271 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4272
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004273- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4274
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004275- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4276 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4277
4278- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4279 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4280 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4281 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4282 and other systems.
4283
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004284- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4285 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4286 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4287 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 +00004288 work well with these.
4289
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004290- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4291
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004292- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004293 connections.
4294
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004295- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4296 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4297 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4298
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004299- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4300 sets
4301
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004302- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4303 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4304 name.
4305
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004306- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4307 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4308 passed in.
4309
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004310- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004311 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004312 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4313 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004314
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004315- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4316
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004317- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4318
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004319- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4320 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4321 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4322
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004323- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4324 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4325 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4326 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004327 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004328
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004329- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004330 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004331 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004332
4333- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4334 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4335 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4336
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004337- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004338 the value of its expression argument.
4339
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004340- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4341 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4342 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4343
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004344- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4345 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4346 skipstone browser was included.
4347
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004348- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4349 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4350
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004351Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004352-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004353
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004354- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4355 names in addition to accepting file names.
4356
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004357- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4358 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4359 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4360 still used and useful.)
4361
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004362- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4363 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4364 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4365 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004366
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004367- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4368 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4369 the generated binary.
4370
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004371Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004372-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004373
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004374- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4375
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004376- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4377 except in the hands of experts.
4378
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004379- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004380 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4381 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4382 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004383
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004384- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4385 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4386 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4387 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4388 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4389 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4390 builds.
4391
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004392- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4393 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4394 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4395 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4396 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4397 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4398 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4399 new type.
4400
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004401- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004402
4403 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4404 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4405 positive infinities.
4406
4407 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4408 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4409 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4410 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4411 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4412 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4413 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4414
4415 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4416
4417 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4418
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004419- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4420 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4421 size of the executable.
4422
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004423- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4424 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4425 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4426 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004427
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004428- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4429
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004430- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4431 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4432 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004433
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004434- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4435 well as Unix.
4436
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004437- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4438 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4439 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4440 modules in the README file for details.
4441
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004442C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004443-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004444
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004445- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4446 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004447 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004448 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004449 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004450
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004451- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4452 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4453 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4454 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4455 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4456 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004457 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004458 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4459 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4460 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4461 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4462 aligned.)
4463
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004464- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4465 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4466 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4467
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004468- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4469 level.
4470
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004471- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4472 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4473 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4474 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4475 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4476
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004477- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4478 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4479 code.
4480
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004481- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4482 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4483 adjusting for negative indices.
4484
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004485- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4486 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4487 object.
4488
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004489- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4490 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4491 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4492
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004493- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4494 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004495
4496- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4497
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004498- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4499 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4500 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4501 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4502
4503- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4504
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004505- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004506
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004507- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004508 without going through the buffer API.
4509
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004510- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004511
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004512- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4513 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4514 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4515 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4516
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004517- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4518 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4519
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004520- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004521 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4522
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004523New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004524-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004525
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004526- OpenVMS is now supported.
4527
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004528- AtheOS is now supported.
4529
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004530- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4531
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004532- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4533
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004534Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004535-----
4536
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004537- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4538 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4539 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004540
4541Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004542-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004543
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004544- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4545 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4546 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4547 bugs.
4548 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004549 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004550 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4551 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004552 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004553
4554- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004555 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004556
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004557- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4558 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4559
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004560- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4561 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004562 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004563 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4564
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004565- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4566 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4567 use files" uninstall option).
4568
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004569- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4570
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004571- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4572 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4573
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004574- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4575 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4576 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4577
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004578- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4579 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4580 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4581 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4582 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004583 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4584 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4585 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004586
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004587- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004588 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004589 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4590 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4591 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4592 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4593 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4594 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4595 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4596 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4597 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4598 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4599 work around.
4600
4601- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4602 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4603 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4604 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4605 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4606 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4607 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4608 specified with O_CREAT too).
4609
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004610Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004611----
4612
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004613- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004614
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004615- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4616 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4617 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4618
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004619- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4620 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4621 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4622
4623- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4624 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4625 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4626 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4627 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4628 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4629 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4630 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004631
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004632- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4633 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4634 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004635
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004636- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4637 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4638 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4639 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4640 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004641
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004642- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4643 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4644 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004645
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004646- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4647 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004648
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004649- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4650 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4651 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4652 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4653 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004654
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004655- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4656 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4657 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4658
4659- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4660 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4661 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004662
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004663- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4664 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4665 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4666 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004667 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004668
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004669- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4670 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004671
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004672- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4673 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004674
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004675- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004676 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004677 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4678 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004679
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004680
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004681What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004682===============================
4683
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004684*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4685
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004686Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004687--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004688
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004689- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4690 with a custom metaclass.
4691
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004692Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004693-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004694
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004695- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4696 are proxies.
4697
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004698Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004699-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004700
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004701- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4702 very short strings.
4703
4704- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4705 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4706 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4707 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4708 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4709
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004710Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004711-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004712
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004713- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4714 close or delete time).
4715
4716- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4717 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4718
4719- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4720
4721- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004722 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004723
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004724Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004725-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004726
4727Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004728-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004729
4730C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004731-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004732
4733New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004734-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004735
4736Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004737-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004738
4739Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004740-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004741
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004742- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4743
4744- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4745 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4746
4747- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4748 deleted at process exit time.
4749
4750- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4751 in backslash.
4752
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004753Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004754----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004755
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004756- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4757 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4758 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4759
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004760
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004761What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004762===========================
4763
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004764*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4765
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004766Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004767--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004768
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004769- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4770 been extensively updated. See
4771
4772 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4773
4774 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4775
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004776- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4777 deleted!
4778
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004779- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4780 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4781 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4782 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4783 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4784
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004785- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4786
4787 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4788 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4789
4790 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4791 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4792 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4793 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4794 supported anyway.
4795
4796 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4797 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4798
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004799- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4800 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4801 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4802 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4803 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004804
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004805- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4806 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4807 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4808
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004809Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004810-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004811
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004812- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4813 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4814 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4815 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4816 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4817 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004818 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4819 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4820 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4821 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004822
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004823- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4824 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4825 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4826
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004827Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004828-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004829
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004830- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4831
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004832Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004833-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004834
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004835- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4836 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4837 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4838 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4839 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4840 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4841
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004842- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4843
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004844- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4845
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004846- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4847
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004848- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4849 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4850 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4851
4852- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4853
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004854Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004855-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004856
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004857- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4858 off a search on Google.
4859
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004860Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004861-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004862
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004863- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4864 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4865 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4866 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4867 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4868 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4869 other platforms should do likewise.
4870
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004871- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4872 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4873 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4874
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004875C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004876-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004877
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004878- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4879 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4880 producing key-value pairs.
4881
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004882- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004883 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004884 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4885 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4886 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4887 previously went unchallenged.
4888
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004889New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004890-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004891
4892Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004893-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004894
4895Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004896-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004897
4898Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004899----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004900
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004901- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4902 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004903
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004904- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4905 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4906 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4907 home.
4908
4909
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004910What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004911===========================
4912
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004913*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4914
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004915Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004916--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004917
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004918- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4919 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004920
4921 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004922 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004923
4924 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4925 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004926 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004927 This needs to be documented.
4928
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004929- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4930 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4931
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004932- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4933 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4934 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4935
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004936- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4937 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4938
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004939- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4940 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4941 class forbids it).
4942
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004943- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4944 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4945 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4946
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004947- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4948
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004949Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004950-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004951
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004952- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4953 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004954 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004955
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004956- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4957 (like 1 + '').
4958
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004959Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004960-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004961
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004962- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4963 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4964 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4965 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004966 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004967 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4968
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004969- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4970 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4971 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4972 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4973
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004974- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4975 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004976 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4977 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4978 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004979
4980- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4981 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004982
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004983- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4984 bytes on its input.
4985
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004986Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004987-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004988
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004989- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004990 convenience function.
4991
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004992- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4993 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4994 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004995 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4996 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4997 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4998 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4999 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
5000 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005001
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00005002- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
5003 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
5004 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
5005 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
5006
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00005007- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
5008 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
5009 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
5010
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005011- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
5012 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
5013 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
5014 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
5015
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005016- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
5017 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005018 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005019 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
5020 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
5021 new -l and -e options.
5022
5023- statcache is now deprecated.
5024
5025- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5026 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005027 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005028 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5029 time properly taken into account.
5030
5031- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5032 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5033 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5034 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5035
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005036Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005037-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005038
5039Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005040-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005041
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005042- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5043 is built with libdb3 if available.
5044
5045- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5046
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005047C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005048-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005049
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005050- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5051 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5052 PySequence_Size().
5053
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005054- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5055
5056- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5057 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5058 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5059
5060- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5061 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5062
5063- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5064 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5065
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005066New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005067-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005068
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005069- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5070 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5071
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005072- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5073 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5074
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005075- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5076
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005077Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005078-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005079
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005080- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5081 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5082
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005083Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005084-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005085
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005086Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005087----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005088
5089- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5090 removed completely in the next release.
5091
5092- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5093 OSX.
5094
5095- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5096 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5097
5098- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5099
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005100
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005101What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005102===========================
5103
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005104*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5105
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005106Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005107--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005108
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005109- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005110 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005111 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005112 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5113 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005114 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5115 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005116 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5117 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005118
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005119- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5120 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5121
5122- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5123 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5124
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005125Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005126-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005127
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005128- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5129 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5130 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5131 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5132 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5133 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5134 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5135 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5136
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005137- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5138 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5139 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5140 example).
5141
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005142- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005143 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005144 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005145 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005146
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005147- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5148 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5149 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005150 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005151
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005152- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5153 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5154 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5155 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5156 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5157 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5158
5159 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5160
5161 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5162
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005163Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005164-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005165
5166- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5167
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005168- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5169
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005170- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5171 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005172
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005173- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5174 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5175 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5176 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5177 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5178 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005179 attributes.
5180
5181- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5182 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5183 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005184
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005185- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5186 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5187 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005188
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005189- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5190 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5191 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005192 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5193 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5194
5195- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5196 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005197
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005198Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005199-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005200
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005201- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5202 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5203
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005204- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5205 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5206 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5207 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5208
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005209- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5210 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5211 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5212 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5213
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005214 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5215 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5216 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5217 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5218 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5219 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5220 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5221 without losing information).
5222
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005223- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005224 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5225 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5226 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5227 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5228 module).
5229
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005230 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005231 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5232 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5233 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5234 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005235
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005236- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005237 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5238 encoding.
5239
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005240- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5241 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5242
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005243- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005244 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5245
5246- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5247 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5248 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5249 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5250
5251- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5252
5253- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5254 ON, and OFF.
5255
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005256- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5257 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5258
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005259Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005260-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005261
5262- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5263 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5264 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005265
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005266- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5267 been added: -X and -E.
5268
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005269Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005270-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005271
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005272- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5273 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5274
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005275C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005276-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005277
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005278- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5279 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5280 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5281 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5282 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5283
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005284- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5285 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5286 as long) arguments.
5287
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005288- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5289 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5290 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5291 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5292 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5293 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5294
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005295- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5296 input.
5297
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005298New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005299-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005300
5301Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005302-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005303
5304Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005305-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005306
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005307- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5308 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5309 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5310
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005311- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5312 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5313 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005314 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005315
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005316 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5317 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5318 import signal
5319 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005320
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005321 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005322 while 1:
5323 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005324 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005325 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5326 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5327 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5328 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005329
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005330
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005331What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5332===========================
5333
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005334*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5335
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005336Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005337--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005338
5339- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5340 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5341 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5342
5343- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5344 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5345 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5346 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5347 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5348 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5349 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005350
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005351- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005352 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005353 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5354 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5355 associate a docstring with a property.
5356
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005357- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5358 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5359 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5360 other built-in object types.
5361
5362- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5363 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5364 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5365 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5366 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5367
5368- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5369 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5370
5371- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5372 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005373 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005374 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5375 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5376 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5377 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5378 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5379
5380- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5381 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5382 class.
5383
5384- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5385 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5386 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5387 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5388
5389- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5390 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5391 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5392 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5393
5394- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5395 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5396
5397- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5398 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5399 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5400 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5401 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005402 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005403 with the same value as s.
5404
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005405- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5406
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005407Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005408----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005409
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005410- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5411
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005412- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5413 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5414 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5415 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5416 objects.
5417
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005418- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5419 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005420 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5421 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5422
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005423- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5424 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5425 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5426
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005427Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005428-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005429
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005430- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5431 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5432 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5433 by the instances.
5434
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005435- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5436 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5437 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5438
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005439- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5440 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5441 before the entire comparison is complete.
5442
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005443- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5444 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5445 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5446
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005447- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5448 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5449 getwriter().
5450
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005451- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5452 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5453
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005454- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005455 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5456 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5457
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005458- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5459 iterable object.
5460
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005461- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5462 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005463
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005464- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5465 authentication.
5466
5467- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5468 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005469
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005470- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005471 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5472 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5473 a sample driver.)
5474
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005475Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005476-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005477
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005478- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5479 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5480 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5481 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5482 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5483 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5484 kernel has large file support.
5485
5486- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5487 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5488 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5489 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5490 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5491
5492- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5493 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5494 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5495
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005496C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005497-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005498
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005499- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5500 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5501
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005502New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005503-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005504
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005505- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5506 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5507
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005508Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005509-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005510
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005511- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5512 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5513 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5514 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5515 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5516
5517- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5518 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5519 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5520 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5521
5522- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5523 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5524
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005525Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005526-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005527
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005528- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005529 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5530 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005531
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005532
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005533What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5534===========================
5535
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005536*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5537
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005538Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005539----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005540
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005541- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5542 big to represent as a C double.
5543
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005544- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5545 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5546 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5547 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5548 restriction).
5549
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005550- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5551 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5552 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5553 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5554 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5555
5556 >>> dir([])
5557 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5558 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5559 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5560 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5561 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5562 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5563 'reverse', 'sort']
5564
5565 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5566
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005567- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005568 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5569 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5570 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5571 OverflowError exception.
5572
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005573- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005574 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005575 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5576 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5577 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5578 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5579 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005580 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005581 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5582 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5583
5584 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5585 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5586 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5587 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005588
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005589- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005590 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5591 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5592 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5593 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5594 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5595 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5596 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5597 once it is created.
5598
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005599- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5600 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5601 (key, value) pairs.
5602
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005603- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005604 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5605 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5606
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005607- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5608 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5609 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5610 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5611 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005612
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005613- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005614 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5615 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5616
5617 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5618
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005619- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005620 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5621
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005622Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005623-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005624
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005625- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005626 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5627 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005628
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005629- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5630 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5631 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5632 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5633 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5634 in this area anymore).
5635
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005636- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5637 threading.Timer.
5638
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005639- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5640 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5641
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005642- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005643 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5644
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005645- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005646 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5647 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5648 converted to Python longs.
5649
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005650- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005651 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5652
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005653- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5654 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5655 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5656
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005657Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005658-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005659
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005660- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5661 division operators as per PEP 238.
5662
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005663Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005664-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005665
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005666- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5667 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5668 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5669 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5670
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005671C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005672-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005673
5674- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005675
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005676- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5677 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005678 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005679
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005680 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5681 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005682 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005683 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005684
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005685- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005686 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5687 module:
5688
5689 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005690
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005691 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5692 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005693
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005694 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5695 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005696
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005697 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5698
5699 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5700
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005701- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005702 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5703 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5704 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005705
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005706New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005707-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005708
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005709- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5710 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5711 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5712 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5713 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005714
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005715Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005716-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005717
5718Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005719-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005720
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005721- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5722 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5723 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5724 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005725 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5726 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5727 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5728 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5729 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005730
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005731- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005732 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5733
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005734
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005735What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5736===========================
5737
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005738*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5739
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005740Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005741-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005742
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005743- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5744 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5745
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005746- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5747 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5748 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005749
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005750- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5751 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5752 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5753 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005754
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005755- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5756
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005757- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005758
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005759Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005760-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005761
5762- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005763 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005764 the module docstring for details.
5765
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005766Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005767-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005768
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005769- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005770 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5771 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5772 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005773
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005774- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5775 Nick Mathewson.
5776
5777Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005778----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005779
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005780- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5781 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5782 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5783 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5784 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5785 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5786 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5787 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5788
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005789- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5790 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5791 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5792 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5793
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005794- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5795 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5796 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5797 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5798 come a long way).
5799
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005800- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5801 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5802 write filters for these warnings).
5803
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005804- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5805 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5806 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5807 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5808 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5809
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005810- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5811 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5812 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5813 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5814 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5815 older distribution.
5816
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005817Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005818-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005819
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005820- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5821 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005822 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005823
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005824- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5825 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5826 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5827
5828- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5829
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005830- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5831
5832- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5833
5834- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5835
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005836- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005837
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005838- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5839
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005840New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005841-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005842
5843C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005844-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005845
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005846- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5847 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5848 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5849 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5850 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5851 against buffer overruns.
5852
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005853- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005854 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5855 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005856 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5857 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5858 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5859
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005860- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5861 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5862 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5863 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5864 deprecated.
5865
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005866Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005867-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005868
5869- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5870 relevant is found.
5871
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005872
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005873What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005874===========================
5875
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005876*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5877
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005878Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005879----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005880
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005881- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5882 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5883 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5884 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5885 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5886 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5887 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5888 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005889 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005890 repaired.
5891
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005892- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005893 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005894 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5895 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5896 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5897 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5898 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5899 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5900 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5901 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5902
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005903- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5904 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5905 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5906 leading BMO character).
5907
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005908- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5909 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5910 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5911
5912 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5913 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5914 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005915
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005916 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5917 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5918 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5919 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5920 for various simple to use conversions.
5921
5922 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5923 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5924
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005925 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5926 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5927 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5928 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5929 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5930 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5931 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5932 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5933 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5934 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5935 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5936 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5937 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5938 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5939 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005940
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005941- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5942 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5943 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005944 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005945 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005946
5947 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005948 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5949 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5950 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5951 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5952 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005953 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5954 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005955
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005956 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5957 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5958 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005959 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005960
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005961- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5962 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5963 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5964 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5965 floating arithmetic,
5966
5967 x = 9007199254740992.0
5968 print long(x)
5969
5970 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5971 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5972 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5973 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5974 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5975 functions are of good quality).
5976
5977 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5978 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5979 algorithms to break.
5980
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005981- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5982 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5983 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5984 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5985 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5986 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5987 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5988 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5989 order.
5990
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005991- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5992 operation along the most common code paths.
5993
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005994- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5995 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5996
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005997- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5998 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5999 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
6000 {}.update(UserDict())
6001
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006002- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
6003 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
6004 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
6005 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
6006 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
6007 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
6008 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
6009 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
6010
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006011- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00006012 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006013
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006014 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00006015 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
6016 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00006017 join() method of strings
6018 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006019 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
6020 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006021 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006022 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006023
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006024- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6025 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6026
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006027- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6028 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6029
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006030- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6031 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6032 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6033 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6034
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006035- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6036 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006037 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006038 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6039 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006040
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006041- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6042
6043
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006044Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006045-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006046
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006047- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006048 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006049 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6050 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6051
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006052- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6053 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6054
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006055- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6056 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6057 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6058 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6059
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006060- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6061 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6062 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6063
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006064- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6065
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006066- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6067
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006068- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6069 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6070 that are still imported into string.py).
6071
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006072- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6073
6074- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6075 Now it does.
6076
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006077- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6078
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006079- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6080 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6081 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6082 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6083 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006084 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6085 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006086
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006087- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6088 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6089 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6090 'help(object)'.
6091
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006092Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006093-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006094
6095- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006096 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006097 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6098 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6099
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006100- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006101 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6102 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006103
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006104C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006105-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006106
6107- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6108 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006109
6110----
6111
6112**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**