blob: cd947a923bad359736c4758f573a21c1b04143b4 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000015- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
16
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000017- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
18 and long longs.
19
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000020- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
21 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
22 message in this case.
23
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000024- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
25 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
26 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
27 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
28 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
29
30- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
31
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000032- Speed up some Unicode operations.
33
34- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
35
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000036- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000037 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
38
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000039- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
40
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000041- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
42 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
43
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000044- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
45
46- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
47
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000048- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
49 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
50 was empty.
51
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000052- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
53 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
54
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000055- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000056 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000057
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000058- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
59 codes.
60
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000061- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
62 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
63 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
64
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000065- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
66 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
67
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000068- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000069 (fixes bug #1119418).
70
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000071- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
72
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000073- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
74 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
75
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000076- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
77 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
78 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
79
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000080- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
81
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000082- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
83 reference counts in some error exit cases.
84
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000085- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
86 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
87 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
88 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
89 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
90 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
91 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
92 realloc.
93
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000094- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
95 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
96
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000097- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
98 like their int counterparts.
99
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000100- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
101 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
102 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
103 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
104 for a longer write-up of the problem).
105
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000106- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
107 serializing floats.
108
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000109- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
110 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
111 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
112
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000113- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
114 278.
115
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000116- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
117 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
118 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
119 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000120 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000121 PyNumber_*().
122 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
123
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000124- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
125 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
126 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
127 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
128
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000129- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
130 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
131 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
132 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
133 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
134
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000135- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
136 disabled caused a crash.
137
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000138- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
139 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
140
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000141- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000142 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
143
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000144- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
145
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000146- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000147 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
148 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
149 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000150
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000151- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
152
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000153- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
154 returning None.
155
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000156- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000157 ('\') with a specific error message.
158
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000159- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
160
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000161- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
162 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
163
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000164- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000165 an ferror() call.
166
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000167- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
168 list.sort().
169
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000170- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
171 (2+3) --> (5).
172
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000173- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
174
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000175- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
176 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000177
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000178- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
179 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
180 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
181
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000182- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
183 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
184 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
185
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000186Extension Modules
187-----------------
188
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000189- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
190
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000191- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
192
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000193- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
194
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000195- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
196 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
197
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000198- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
199
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000200- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
201 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
202
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000203- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
204
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000205- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
206 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
207
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000208- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
209 returns in cStringIO.c.
210
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000211- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
212 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
213
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000214- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
215
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000216- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
217
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000218- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
219 the file system encoding.
220
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000221- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
222 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000223
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000224- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
225
226- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000227 line without newlines.
228
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000229- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
230 on Windows.
231
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000232- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000233 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
234
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000235- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
236 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
237 for large or negative values.
238
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000239- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000240 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000241
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000242- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
243
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000244- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
245 if available on the platform.
246
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000247- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
248 available on the platform.
249
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000250- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
251 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
252
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000253- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
254
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000255- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
256 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
257 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
258
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000259- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
260
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000261- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
262 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
263
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000264- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000265 file size.
266
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000267- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
268
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000269- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
270 {remove_history,replace_history}
271
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000272- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
273 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000274
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000275- stat_float_times is now True.
276
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000277- array.array objects are now picklable.
278
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000279- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
280 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
281
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000282- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
283 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
284 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
285
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000286- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
287 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000288
289Library
290-------
291
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000292- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
293
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000294- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
295
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000296- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
297 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
298 illegal argument)
299
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000300- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
301 is an error in the format string.
302
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000303- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
304
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000305- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000306 "parent" argument.
307
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000308- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
309 for padding.
310
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000311- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
312 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
313
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000314- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
315 to get the correct encoding.
316
317- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
318 languages.
319
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000320- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
321
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000322- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
323
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000324- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
325
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000326- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
327 functionality.
328
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000329- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
330
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000331- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
332 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
333
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000334- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
335 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
336 match the Content-Length header.
337
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000338- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
339
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000340- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
341 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000342 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000343
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000344- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
345
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000346- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
347
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000348- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
349 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
350
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000351- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
352 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
353 Tkdnd.
354
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000355- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
356 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
357
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000358- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
359 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
360
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000361- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000362 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
363
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000364- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
365 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
366
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000367- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
368 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
369
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000370- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000371 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000372
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000373- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
374
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000375- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
376 error messages.
377
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000378- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
379
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000380- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
381 Bug #1224621.
382
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000383- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
384 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
385 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
386 terminates by raising StopIteration.
387
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000388- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
389
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000390- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
391 component of the path.
392
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000393- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
394 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
395 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
396 class at all.
397
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000398- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
399 files to PyPI.
400
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000401- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
402 them to PyPI.
403
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000404- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
405 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
406 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
407 work as expected.
408
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000409- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
410 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
411
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000412- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000413 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
414
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000415- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
416
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000417- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
418 to build.
419
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000420- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
421 symbolic links on Windows.
422
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000423- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000424 profile.py if available.
425
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000426- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
427
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000428- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
429 in LWPCookieJar.
430
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000431- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
432
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000433- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
434
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000435- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
436
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000437- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
438
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000439- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
440
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000441- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
442
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000443- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
444
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000445- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
446
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000447- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
448 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
449 be exploited in various ways.
450
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000451- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
452
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000453- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
454
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000455- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
456
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000457- Enhancements to the csv module:
458
459 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000460 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000461 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000462 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
463 reporting.
464 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
465 dictates.
466 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000467 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000468 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000469 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
470 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000471 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
472 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000473 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000474 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
475 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
476 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
477 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
478 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
479 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
480 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
481 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
482 without first creating a dialect class.
483 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
484 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
485 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000486 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000487 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
488 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000489 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
490 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
491 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
492 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000493 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
494 This has been fixed.
495
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000496- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
497 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
498 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
499 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
500
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000501- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
502
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000503- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
504 (Bug #951915).
505
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000506- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
507 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
508 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000509 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000510
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000511- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
512
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000513- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
514 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
515
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000516- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
517
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000518- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
519
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000520- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
521
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000522- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
523
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000524- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
525
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000526- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
527 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
528 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
529
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000530- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000531 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000532
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000533- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
534 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
535 tokenizer with very long source lines.
536
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000537- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
538 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
539
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000540- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
541 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000542
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000543- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
544 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
545
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000546- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
547 correctly.
548
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000549- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
550 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
551 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
552 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
553 between two lines.
554
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000555- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
556 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
557 handlers.
558
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000559- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000560 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
561 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000562
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000563- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
564 considering it exactly like a '*'.
565
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000566- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
567 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000568
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000569- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
570
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000571Build
572-----
573
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000574- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
575 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
576
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000577- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
578 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
579
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000580- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
581 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
582 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000583 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000584
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000585- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
586 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
587 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
588
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000589- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
590
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000591- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
592 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
593
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000594- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
595 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
596 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
597 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
598 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
599 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
600 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
601 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
602
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000603- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
604 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
605 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
606 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
607
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000608
609C API
610-----
611
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000612- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
613
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000614- Removed PyRange_New().
615
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000616- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
617 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
618 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
619 mappings.
620
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000621
622Tests
623-----
624
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000625- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000626
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000627
628Documentation
629-------------
630
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000631- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
632
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000633- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
634
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000635- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
636
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000637- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
638
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000639- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
640
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000641- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
642
643- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
644
645- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
646
647- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
648
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000649- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
650 Closes bug #1166582.
651
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000652- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
653 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
654 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
655
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000656Mac
657---
658
659
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000660New platforms
661-------------
662
663- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
664
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000665
666Tools/Demos
667-----------
668
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000669- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
670 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
671 source files that need an encoding declaration.
672 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
673
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000674- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
675
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000676- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000677
678
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000679What's New in Python 2.4 final?
680===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000681
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000682*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000683
684Core and builtins
685-----------------
686
687- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
688 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
689 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
690
691
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000692What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
693==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000694
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000695*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000696
697Core and builtins
698-----------------
699
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000700- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
701 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
702 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
703
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000704
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000705Library
706-------
707
708- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
709 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
710 raised is re-raised.
711
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000712- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
713 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
714
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000715- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
716 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
717 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
718 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
719 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
720 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
721 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
722 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
723 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
724 by the slice are recomputed now.
725
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000726- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000727
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000728Build
729-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000730
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000731- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
732 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
733 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000734
735C API
736-----
737
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000738- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
739
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000740
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000741What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
742================================
743
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000744*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000745
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000746License
747-------
748
749The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
750is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
751changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
752Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
753intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
754durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
755the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
756License::
757
758 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
759
760says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
761to Python 2.1.1.
762
763The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
764License Version 2.
765
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000766Core and builtins
767-----------------
768
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000769- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
770 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
771 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
772 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
773 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
774 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
775 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000776 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000777 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
778 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
779
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000780- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000781
782Extension Modules
783-----------------
784
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000785- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
786 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
787 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
788 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000789
790Library
791-------
792
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000793- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
794 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
795 returned.
796
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000797- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
798
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000799- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
800 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
801
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000802- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
803
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000804- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
805 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000806
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000807- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
808
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000809- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
810
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000811- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000812 the source code is updated and reloaded.
813
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000814Build
815-----
816
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000817- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000818
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000819What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
820================================
821
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000822*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000823
824Core and builtins
825-----------------
826
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000827- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000828 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
829
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000830- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
831 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
832 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
833 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
834
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000835- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
836 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
837
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000838- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
839 constant.
840
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000841- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
842 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
843 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
844 large), and to anomalies such as
845 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
846 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
847 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
848 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000849
850Extension modules
851-----------------
852
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000853- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
854 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000855 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
856 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
857 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000858
859Library
860-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000861
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000862- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000863 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000864 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
865 --swig-cpp.
866
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000867- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
868 it is set.
869
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000870- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000871
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000872- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
873 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
874 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
875 Closes bug #1039270.
876
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000877- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000878
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000879 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000880 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
881 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
882 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
883 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
884 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
885 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
886 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
887 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
888 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
889 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
890 + Updates to documentation.
891
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000892- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
893 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
894 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
895 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
896
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000897- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000898
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000899- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
900 applications should use the getmember function.
901
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000902- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
903
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000904- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
905 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
906 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
907 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
908 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
909 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
910 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
911 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
912 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
913
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000914- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
915 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000916 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000917
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000918- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
919 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
920 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
921 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
922 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
923 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
924 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
925 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000926
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000927- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
928 the new public features (of which there are many).
929
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000930- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000931 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
932 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
933 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
934 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000935 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000936
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000937- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
938
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000939- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
940 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
941 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
942 options.
943
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000944- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
945 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
946 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
947 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
948 conditions under which non-string values work.
949
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000950Build
951-----
952
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000953- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
954 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
955 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
956
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000957- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
958 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
959 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
960 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
961 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000962
963C API
964-----
965
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000966- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
967 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
968
969- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
970
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000971- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
972 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
973 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
974 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
975 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
976 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
977 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
978 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
979 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
980
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000981- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
982
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000983- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
984 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
985 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000986
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000987Tests
988-----
989
990- test__locale ported to unittest
991
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000992Mac
993---
994
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000995- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
996 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
997 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000998
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000999Tools/Demos
1000-----------
1001
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001002- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1003 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1004 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1005 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1006 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001007
1008
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001009What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1010=================================
1011
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001012*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001013
1014Core and builtins
1015-----------------
1016
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001017- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001018 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1019
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001020- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1021 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1022 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1023 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1024 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1025 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1026 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1027 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001028 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1029 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1030 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1031 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1032 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001033
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001034- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1035 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1036 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1037 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1038 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1039
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001040- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1041
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001042- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1043 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1044
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001045- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1046 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1047 modified the list.
1048
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001049- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1050 functions is now writable.
1051
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001052- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1053 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1054 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1055 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1056
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001057- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1058 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1059 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1060 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1061 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001062
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001063- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1064 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1065
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001066Extension modules
1067-----------------
1068
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001069- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1070
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001071- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1072 data.
1073
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001074- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1075 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1076 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1077 supposed to have been truncated away.
1078
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001079- Added socket.socketpair().
1080
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001081- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1082 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1083
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001084- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001085 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1086
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001087Library
1088-------
1089
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001090- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001091 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001092
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001093- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1094 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1095
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001096- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1097 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1098
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001099- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1100
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001101- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1102 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001103
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001104- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1105 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1106
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001107- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1108
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001109- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1110
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001111- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1112
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001113- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1114 Percivall.
1115
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001116- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1117 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1118
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001119- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1120 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1121 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001122 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001123
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001124- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1125 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1126 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1127 and exponent.
1128
1129- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1130
1131- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001132 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001133 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1134
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001135- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1136 to the readline module.
1137
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001138- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001139 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1140 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001141
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001142- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1143 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1144 contains symlinks.
1145
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001146- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1147 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1148
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001149- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1150 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1151 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1152
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001153- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1154 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1155 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1156 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1157 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1158 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1159 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1160 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1161 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1162 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1163 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1164 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1165 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1166
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001167- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1168
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001169Tools/Demos
1170-----------
1171
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001172- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1173 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1174
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001175- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1176
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001177Build
1178-----
1179
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001180- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1181 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1182 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1183 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1184 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1185 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1186 plans to do so.
1187
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001188- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1189 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1190
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001191- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1192 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1193
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001194- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1195 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1196
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001197- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1198 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1199
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001200- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1201 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1202
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001203C API
1204-----
1205
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001206..
1207
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001208Documentation
1209-------------
1210
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001211- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1212 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1213
1214- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1215 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1216 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001217
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001218New platforms
1219-------------
1220
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001221- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1222
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001223Tests
1224-----
1225
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001226..
1227
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001228Windows
1229-------
1230
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001231- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1232 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1233 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1234 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1235 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1236 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1237 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1238 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1239 the problem.
1240
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001241Mac
1242---
1243
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001244..
1245
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001246
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001247What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1248=================================
1249
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001250*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001251
1252Core and builtins
1253-----------------
1254
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001255- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1256 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1257 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1258 sensitive code.
1259
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001260- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001261 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001262
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001263 @staticmethod
1264 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001265
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001266 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001267
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001268- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1269 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1270 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1271 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1272 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1273 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1274 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1275 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1276 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1277 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1278 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1279
1280 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1281 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1282 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1283 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1284 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1285 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1286 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1287
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001288- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1289 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1290
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001291- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001292 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001293
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001294- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001295 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001296 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1297
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001298- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001299 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1300 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1301
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001302- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1303 types that support garbage collection.
1304
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001305- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1306
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001307- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1308 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1309 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1310 Jython.
1311
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001312- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1313
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001314- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1315 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1316
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001317- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1318 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1319 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001320
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001321- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1322 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1323 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1324
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001325Extension modules
1326-----------------
1327
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001328- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1329
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001330Library
1331-------
1332
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001333- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1334 TIS-620
1335
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001336- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1337 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1338 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1339 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1340 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1341 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1342 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1343 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1344 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1345 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1346
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001347- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1348
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001349- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1350 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1351 same as when the argument is omitted).
1352 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1353
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001354- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1355
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001356- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1357 schemes are offered.
1358
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001359- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1360
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001361- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1362 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1363 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1364
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001365- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1366
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001367- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1368 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1369
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001370- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1371 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1372 when dummy_threading is being used.
1373
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001374- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1375 from a tarfile.
1376
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001377- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001378 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001379
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001380- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1381 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1382 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1383 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1384
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001385- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1386 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1387
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001388- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1389 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1390 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1391 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1392 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1393 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1394 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1395 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1396 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1397 by some other method in progress).
1398
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001399- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1400 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1401 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001402
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001403- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1404
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001405- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1406 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1407 AM Kuchling.
1408
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001409- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1410 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1411 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1412
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001413- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1414 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1415 instead of unsigned.
1416
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001417- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001418 no longer part of the public API.
1419
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001420- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1421 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1422 string methods of the same name).
1423
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001424- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001425 SF patch 945642.
1426
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001427- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1428
1429 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1430
1431 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1432 DocTestSuites.
1433
1434- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1435 that provide thread-local data.
1436
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001437- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1438 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1439
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001440- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1441
1442- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1443 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1444 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1445
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001446- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1447
1448 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1449 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1450 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001451
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001452 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1453 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1454 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1455 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1456
1457 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1458 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1459
1460 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1461 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1462 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1463 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1464
1465 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1466 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1467 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1468 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1469 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1470
1471 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1472 wrapping help output.
1473
1474 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1475 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1476 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001477
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001478C API
1479-----
1480
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001481- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1482 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1483 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1484 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1485 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1486 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1487 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1488 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1489 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1490 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1491 its visible semantics have not changed.
1492
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001493- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1494 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1495
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001496Documentation
1497-------------
1498
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001499- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001500
1501 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001502 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001503
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001504 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001505
1506 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1507
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001508- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001509
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001510Tests
1511-----
1512
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001513- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001514 platforms that use the Makefile.
1515
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001516- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1517 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1518 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1519
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001520
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001521What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1522=================================
1523
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001524*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001525
1526Core and builtins
1527-----------------
1528
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001529- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1530 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1531 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1532 objects now (one object instead of three).
1533
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001534- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1535 Windows DLLs.
1536
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001537- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1538 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001539
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001540- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1541 a new .pyc magic.
1542
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001543- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1544 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1545 be there.
1546
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001547- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1548 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1549 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1550
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001551- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1552 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1553 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1554
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001555- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1556
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001557- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1558 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1559 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001560
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001561- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1562 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1563
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001564- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1565
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001566- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001567 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001568
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001569- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1570
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001571- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1572
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001573- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1574 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1575
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001576- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1577 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1578 Fixes bug #858016 .
1579
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001580- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1581 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1582 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1583
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001584- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1585 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1586 improves their performance (about 35%).
1587
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001588- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1589 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1590 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1591
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001592- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1593 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1594 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1595 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1596
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001597- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1598 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001599 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001600 length is not known).
1601
1602- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1603 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001604 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1605 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001606 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1607
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001608- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1609 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1610
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001611- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1612 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1613 keyword arguments.
1614
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001615- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1616 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1617 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1618
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001619- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1620 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1621 cases.
1622
1623- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1624 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1625 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1626 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1627 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1628 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1629 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1630 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1631 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1632 a release build.
1633
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001634- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1635 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1636
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001637- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001638 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001639
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001640- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1641 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1642 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1643 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1644 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1645 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1646 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1647 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1648 destroyed.
1649
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001650- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1651 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1652 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1653 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1654 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1655 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1656 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1657 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1658
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001659- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1660 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1661 character other than a space.
1662
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001663- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1664 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1665 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1666 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1667 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1668 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1669 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1670 attributes with the same name.
1671
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001672- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1673 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1674 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1675 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1676 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1677 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1678 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1679 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1680 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1681 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1682 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1683 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1684 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1685 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001686
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001687- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1688 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1689 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1690 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1691 This has been repaired.
1692
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001693- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1694
1695- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1696
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001697- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1698 over a sequence.
1699
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001700- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001701 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001702
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001703- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1704
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001705- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1706 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1707 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1708 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1709 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1710 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1711 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1712 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1713
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001714- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1715 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1716 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1717
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001718- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1719 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1720 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1721 freelist.
1722
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001723- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1724 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1725
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001726- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1727 number.
1728
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001729- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1730 a TypeError exception.
1731
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001732- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1733 820195.
1734
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001735- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1736 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1737 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1738
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001739- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001740 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1741 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001742
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001743- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1744 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1745 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1746
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001747- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1748 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001749 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001750
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001751- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001752 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1753 the first call.
1754
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001755
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001756Extension modules
1757-----------------
1758
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001759- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1760 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1761
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001762- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1763 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1764 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1765 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1766 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1767 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1768 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001769
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001770- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1771
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001772- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1773
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001774- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1775 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1776
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001777- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1778 fewer false positives.
1779
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001780- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1781 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1782
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001783- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001784 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1785
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001786- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001787 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001788 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001789 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1790 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001791
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001792- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1793 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1794 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1795 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1796
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001797- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1798 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1799 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1800 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1801 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1802 #897625.
1803
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001804- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1805 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1806
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001807- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1808 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1809 and pops on either side of the deque.
1810
1811- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1812 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1813
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001814- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1815 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1816 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1817 other functions that expect a function argument.
1818
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001819- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1820
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001821- os.getsid was added.
1822
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001823- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1824 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1825 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1826
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001827- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1828
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001829- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1830
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001831- readline.clear_history was added.
1832
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001833- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1834
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001835- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1836
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001837- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1838
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001839- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1840
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001841- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1842
1843- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1844
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001845- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1846
1847- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1848
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001849- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1850 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1851 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1852
1853- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1854 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1855 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1856 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1857 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1858 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1859 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1860
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001861- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1862 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1863 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1864 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001865
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001866- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001867 iterators from a single iterable.
1868
1869- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1870 of raising a TypeError exception.
1871
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001872- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1873 as parameter.
1874
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001875Library
1876-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001877
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001878- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1879
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001880- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1881 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1882 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001883
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001884- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1885 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1886 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001887
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001888- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001889
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001890- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1891 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001892
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001893- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1894 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1895
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001896- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1897
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001898- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001899 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001900
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001901- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001902 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001903
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001904- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1905
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001906- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1907 on cygwin and mingw32.
1908
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001909- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1910
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001911- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1912 module.
1913
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001914- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1915 installation scheme for all platforms.
1916
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001917- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001918 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001919
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001920- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1921 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1922 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1923
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001924- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1925 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1926 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1927
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001928- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1929
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001930- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1931
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001932- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1933 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1934
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001935- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1936 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1937 type pattern with the same value exists.
1938
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001939- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1940 when run from the command prompt).
1941
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001942- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1943 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1944
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001945- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1946 default sort).
1947
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001948- Added global runctx function to profile module
1949
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001950- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1951
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001952- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1953
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001954- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1955
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001956- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001957 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1958 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1959 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1960 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1961 accordingly.
1962
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001963- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1964 decoding standards.
1965
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001966- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1967 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1968 called for all requests.
1969
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001970- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1971 they are passed to the compiler.
1972
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001973- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1974 indent, width and depth.
1975
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001976- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1977 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1978
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001979- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1980 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1981
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001982- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1983
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001984- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1985
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001986- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1987
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001988- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1989 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1990
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001991- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001992 for better performance.
1993
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001994- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001995
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001996- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1997 a string).
1998
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001999- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2000
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002001- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2002
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002003- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2004
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002005- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2006
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002007- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2008 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2009 list of fieldnames.
2010
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002011- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2012 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2013
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002014- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2015
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002016- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2017 empty lists.
2018
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002019- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2020 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2021 and shelves.
2022
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002023- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2024 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2025
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002026- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002027 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2028 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002029
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002030- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2031 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002032 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002033
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002034- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002035 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2036 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2037
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002038- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2039 and removed in Py2.4.
2040
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002041- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2042
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002043- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2044
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002045Tools/Demos
2046-----------
2047
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002048- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2049 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2050
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002051- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2052
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002053- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2054 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2055 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2056 destination in situations where both files are given.
2057
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002058- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2059 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2060 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2061 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2062
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002063- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2064
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002065- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2066 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2067 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2068 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2069 now.
2070
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002071- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2072 in effect
2073
2074- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2075 C-c C-h
2076
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002077- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2078 -d option was given.
2079
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002080Build
2081-----
2082
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002083- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2084 build under OS X.
2085
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002086- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2087 --enable-profiling.
2088
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002089- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2090 is configured --with-tsc.
2091
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002092- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2093 on AMD64.
2094
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002095- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2096 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2097
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002098- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2099 removed.
2100
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002101- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2102 supported (see PEP 11).
2103
2104- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2105
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002106- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2107
2108- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2109 (see PEP 11).
2110
2111- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2112 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2113
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002114C API
2115-----
2116
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002117- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2118 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2119 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2120
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002121- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2122 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2123 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2124 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2125
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002126- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2127 generator objects.
2128
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002129- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2130 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002131 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2132 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002133
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002134- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2135 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2136
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002137- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2138 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2139 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2140 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2141 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2142
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002143- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2144 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2145 about 10% faster.
2146
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002147- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2148 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2149
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002150- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2151 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2152 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2153 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2154
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002155Windows
2156-------
2157
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002158- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2159 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2160 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2161 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2162
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002163- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2164 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2165 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2166
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002167
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002168What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2169===============================
2170
2171*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2172
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002173IDLE
2174----
2175
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002176- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2177 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2178 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2179 context-menu actions.
2180
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002181- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2182 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2183 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2184 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2185 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2186 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2187 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2188 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2189 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2190
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002191
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002192What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2193=============================================
2194
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002195*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002196
2197Core and builtins
2198-----------------
2199
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002200- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002201 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002202 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2203
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002204Extension modules
2205-----------------
2206
2207- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2208 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2209 than once. This has been fixed.
2210
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002211- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2212 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2213 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2214 call.
2215
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002216- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2217
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002218Library
2219-------
2220
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002221- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2222 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2223
2224- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2225 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2226 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2227 restored.
2228
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002229IDLE
2230----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002231
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002232- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002233
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002234Build
2235-----
2236
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002237- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2238 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2239
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002240C API
2241-----
2242
2243Windows
2244-------
2245
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002246- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2247 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2248
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002249- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2250
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002251Mac
2252---
2253
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002254- Various fixes to pimp.
2255
2256- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2257
2258- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2259 more problems than it solves.
2260
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002261
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002262What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2263=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002264
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002265*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2266
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002267Core and builtins
2268-----------------
2269
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002270- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2271 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2272
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002273- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2274 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002275 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002276
2277- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2278 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2279 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002280 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002281
2282- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2283 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002284
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002285- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2286 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2287 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2288
2289- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002290 770247.
2291
2292- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002293
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002294Extension modules
2295-----------------
2296
2297- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2298 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2299
2300- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2301
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002302- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2303
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002304- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2305 contained within the _strptime module.
2306
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002307- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2308 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2309
2310- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002311 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2312
2313- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2314 the find_class attribute, if present.
2315
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002316- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002317
2318 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2319 (SF bug 763298).
2320
2321 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002322 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2323 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2324 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002325
2326 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2327
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002328Library
2329-------
2330
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002331- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2332
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002333- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2334 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2335 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2336 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2337 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2338 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2339 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2340 or Tester().
2341
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002342- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2343 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2344 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2345 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2346 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2347 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2348 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2349 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2350 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002351
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002352 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002353
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002354- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2355 weren't before was an oversight.
2356
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002357- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2358 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2359
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002360- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2361 when there are no lines.
2362
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002363- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2364 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2365
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002366- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2367 to child processes.
2368
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002369- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2370
2371- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2372
2373- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2374 xmlrpclib.
2375
2376- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2377 responses.
2378
2379- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2380 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2381
2382- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2383 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2384 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2385
2386- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2387 used as patterns.
2388
2389- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2390 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2391 than Tk 8.3.
2392
2393- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2394
2395- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002396
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002397Tools/Demos
2398-----------
2399
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002400- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2401
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002402- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2403
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002404- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002405
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002406Build
2407-----
2408
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002409- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2410
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002411- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2412
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002413- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2414 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002415
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002416- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2417 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2418 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002419
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002420C API
2421-----
2422
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002423- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2424 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2425
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002426Windows
2427-------
2428
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002429- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2430 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2431 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2432 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2433 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2434 Python exception ::
2435
2436 thread.error: can't start new thread
2437
2438 is raised now.
2439
2440- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2441 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2442 instead of from DLL teardown.
2443
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002444Mac
2445---
2446
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002447- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002448 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002449 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2450 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2451 the executable in the bundle.
2452
2453- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002454
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002455- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2456
2457- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2458 on Panther.
2459
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002460What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2461================================
2462
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002463*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002464
2465Core and builtins
2466-----------------
2467
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002468- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2469 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2470 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2471 with the -i option.
2472
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002473- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2474 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2475
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002476- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2477 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2478
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002479- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2480 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2481 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2482 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2483 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2484 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2485 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2486 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2487 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2488 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2489 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2490 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2491 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002492
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002493- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2494 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2495 embedded in a lambda expression.
2496
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002497- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2498 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2499 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2500 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2501 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2502
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002503- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2504 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2505 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2506
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002507- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2508 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2509
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002510- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2511 It's writable again.
2512
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002513- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2514 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2515 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002516 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002517
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002518- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2519 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2520 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2521
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002522Extension modules
2523-----------------
2524
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002525- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2526 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2527
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002528- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2529 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2530 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2531 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2532
2533- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2534 collection.
2535
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002536- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2537 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2538 unique within a single program run.
2539
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002540- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2541 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2542
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002543- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2544 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2545
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002546- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2547 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002548
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002549- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2550
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002551- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2552 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2553
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002554- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2555 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2556 for many BSD-derived systems.
2557
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002558
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002559Library
2560-------
2561
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002562- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2563 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2564 primary ones:
2565
2566 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2567 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2568 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2569
2570 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2571 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2572 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2573 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2574 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2575 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2576
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002577- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2578 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2579 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2580 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2581 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2582 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2583 argument.
2584
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002585- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2586 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2587 in the archive.
2588
2589- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2590 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2591
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002592- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2593 569574).
2594
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002595- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2596 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2597 no more.
2598
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002599- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2600 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2601 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2602 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2603 code coverage.
2604
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002605- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2606 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2607 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002608 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2609 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002610
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002611- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2612 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2613 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002614 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002615
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002616- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2617
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002618- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2619 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2620 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2621 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2622
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002623- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2624 handling.
2625
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002626- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2627 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2628
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002629- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2630 in socket.py.
2631
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002632- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2633
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002634- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2635 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2636 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2637 opener with proxy support.
2638
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002639- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2640
2641- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2642
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002643Tools/Demos
2644-----------
2645
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002646- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2647
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002648- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2649
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002650- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2651 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002652
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002653- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2654 files.
2655
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002656Build
2657-----
2658
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002659- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002660 different root directory.
2661
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002662C API
2663-----
2664
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002665- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2666 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2667 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2668 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2669 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2670 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2671 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2672 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2673 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2674 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2675
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002676- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2677 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2678 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2679 from Python.
2680
2681
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002682New platforms
2683-------------
2684
2685None this time.
2686
2687Tests
2688-----
2689
2690- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2691 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2692
2693Windows
2694-------
2695
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002696- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2697
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002698- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2699 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2700 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2701 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2702 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2703 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2704 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2705 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2706 that's what it's for.
2707
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002708Mac
2709---
2710
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002711- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2712 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2713 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2714 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002715- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2716 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2717- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002718
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002719SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2720------------------------------------
2721
2722430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2723598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2724622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2725661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2726683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2727697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2728713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2729724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2730727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2731729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2732730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2733731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2734732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2735733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2736735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2737740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2738744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2739745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2740747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2741749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2742751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2743753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2744755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2745757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2746760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2747
2748
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002749What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2750================================
2751
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002752*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002753
2754Core and builtins
2755-----------------
2756
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002757- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2758 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2759
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002760- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2761 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2762 and cannot be strings).
2763
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002764- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2765 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2766 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2767 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2768
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002769- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2770 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2771 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2772 Python itself.
2773
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002774- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2775 the referenced object, if it has one.
2776
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002777- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2778 the thread started at
2779 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2780
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002781- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2782 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2783 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2784 placed on a list index.
2785
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002786- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2787 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2788 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2789 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2790
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002791- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2792 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2793 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2794 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2795 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2796 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2797 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2798
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002799- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2800 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2801 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2802 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2803 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2804
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002805- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2806 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002807
2808- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2809 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2810 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2811 #693195.)
2812
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002813- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2814 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002815
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002816- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002817 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002818 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2819 interpreter executions, would fail.
2820
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002821- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002822 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002823 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002824
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002825Extension modules
2826-----------------
2827
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002828- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2829 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2830 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2831 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2832
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002833- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2834 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2835
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002836- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2837 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2838 and Greg Chapman.)
2839
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002840- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2841 recursively.
2842
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002843- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002844 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2845 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2846 leaks.
2847
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002848- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2849
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002850- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2851 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2852 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2853 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2854 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2855 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2856 #705836.
2857
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002858- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002859 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2860
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002861- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2862 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2863 See SF bug #692416.
2864
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002865- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2866 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2867
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002868- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2869 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2870 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002871
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002872- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002873 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2874 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2875
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002876- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2877 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2878 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2879 timeouts to work properly.
2880
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002881Library
2882-------
2883
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002884- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2885 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2886 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2887 future release.
2888
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002889- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2890 for querying platform dependent features.
2891
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002892- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002893
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002894- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2895 pickle protocol versions.
2896
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002897- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2898 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2899 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2900
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002901- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2902
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002903- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2904 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2905 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2906 modules.
2907
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002908- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2909 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2910 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2911
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002912- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2913 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2914
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002915- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2916 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2917 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2918
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002919- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002920 MS Office extensions.
2921
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002922- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2923 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2924
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002925- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2926 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2927
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002928- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2929 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2930 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2931 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2932 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2933 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2934
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002935- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2936 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2937 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002938
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002939- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2940 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2941 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2942
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002943- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2944
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002945- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2946 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2947 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2948
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002949Tools/Demos
2950-----------
2951
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002952- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2953 See the module docstring for details.
2954
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002955Build
2956-----
2957
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002958- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2959 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002960
2961C API
2962-----
2963
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002964- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2965
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002966- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2967 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2968 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2969
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002970- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2971 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002972
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002973 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2974 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2975 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002976
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002977- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002978 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2979
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002980- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2981 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2982 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002983
2984New platforms
2985-------------
2986
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002987None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002988
2989Tests
2990-----
2991
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002992- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2993 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002994
2995Windows
2996-------
2997
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002998- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2999 function.
3000
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003001- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3002 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003003
3004Mac
3005---
3006
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003007- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3008 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003009
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003010- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3011 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003012
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003013- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3014 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3015 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003016
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003017- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003018 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3019 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003020
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003021- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3022 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003023
3024
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003025What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3026=================================
3027
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003028*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003029
3030Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003031-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003032
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003033- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3034 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3035 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3036
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003037- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3038 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3039 (SF patch #664376.)
3040
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003041- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3042 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3043 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3044 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3045 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3046 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003047 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003048
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003049- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3050 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3051 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3052 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003053 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003054
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003055- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3056 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3057 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3058 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3059 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3060 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3061 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3062 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3063 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3064 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3065 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3066
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003067- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3068 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3069 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3070 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3071 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3072 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3073
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003074- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3075 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3076
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003077- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3078 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3079 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3080 case.)
3081
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003082- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3083 passed as unicode strings.
3084
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003085- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3086 See SF bug #683467.
3087
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003088- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3089 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3090
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003091- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3092
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003093- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3094
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003095- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3096 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3097 arguments.
3098
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003099- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3100 See SF bug #667147.
3101
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003102- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003103 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003104 See SF bug #676155.
3105
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003106- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003107 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003108 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3109 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3110 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3111 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3112 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3113 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003114
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003115Extension modules
3116-----------------
3117
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003118- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3119 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3120 tp_as_number pointer.
3121
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003122- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3123 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3124 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3125 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3126 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3127
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003128- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3129
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003130- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3131
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003132- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003133 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003134 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3135 patch #678531.)
3136
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003137- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3138 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3139
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003140- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3141 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3142
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003143- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3144
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003145- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3146 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3147 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3148
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003149- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3150
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003151- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3152 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3153
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003154- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003155
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003156- datetime changes:
3157
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003158 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3159
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003160 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3161 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3162 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3163 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3164 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3165 now.
3166
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003167 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003168 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3169 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003170
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003171 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003172 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003173 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3174 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3175 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3176 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003177
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003178 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3179 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3180 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003181 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3182
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003183 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3184 by a later example coded by Guido.
3185
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003186 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003187 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3188 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3189 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003190 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3191 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3192
3193 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3194 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3195 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3196 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3197 tzinfo subclass instance.
3198
3199 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3200 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3201 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3202 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3203 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3204 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3205 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3206 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003207
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003208 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3209 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3210 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3211 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3212 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003213 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3214
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003215 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003216
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003217 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3218 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3219 as a naive datetime object.
3220
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003221 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3222 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3223 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3224
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003225 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3226 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3227 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3228 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3229 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3230 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3231 comparison.
3232
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003233 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3234 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3235 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3236 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003237 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003238
3239 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003240
3241 and ::
3242
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003243 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3244
3245 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3246 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3247 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3248 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3249
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003250 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3251 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3252 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3253 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3254 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3255
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003256 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3257 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003258 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3259 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003260
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003261Library
3262-------
3263
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003264- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3265 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3266
3267- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3268 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3269 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3270 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3271 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3272 See PEP 307 for details.
3273
3274- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3275 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3276
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003277- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3278 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003279 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003280 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3281 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003282 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003283
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003284- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3285 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3286
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003287- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3288 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3289 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3290
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003291- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3292
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003293- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3294 exception.
3295
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003296- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3297 class.
3298
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003299- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3300 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3301 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3302
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003303- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3304 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3305
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003306- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003307 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3308 See SF bug #659228.
3309
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003310- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3311 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3312 See SF patch #651082.
3313
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003314- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003315
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003316- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3317 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3318
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003319- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003320 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003321
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003322- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3323 DOS paths from other platforms.
3324
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003325Tools/Demos
3326-----------
3327
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003328- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3329 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3330 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3331 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3332 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3333 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3334 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3335 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3336 example:
3337
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003338 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3339 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003340
3341 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3342
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003343
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003344Build
3345-----
3346
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003347- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3348 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3349 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003350 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3351
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003352 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3353
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003354- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3355 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3356 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3357 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3358 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3359 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3360 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3361 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3362 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3363
3364- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3365 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3366 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3367 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3368
3369- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3370 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3371
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003372C API
3373-----
3374
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003375- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3376 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003377
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003378- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3379 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3380 tp_as_number pointer.
3381
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003382- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3383 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3384 (SF #681367)
3385
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003386- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3387 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3388 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3389 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003390
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003391Tests
3392-----
3393
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003394- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003395 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3396 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3397 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3398 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3399 pydoc.)
3400
3401- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3402
3403- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003404
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003405Windows
3406-------
3407
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003408- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3409 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3410 time).
3411
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003412- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3413 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3414
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003415- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3416 release without strong cryptography.
3417
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003418- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003419 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003420
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003421- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3422 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3423
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003424Mac
3425---
3426
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003427- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3428 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003429
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003430- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3431 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3432 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003433
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003434- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3435 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003436
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003437- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3438 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3439 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3440 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003441
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003442- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003443 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3444 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3445 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003446
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003447
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003448What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003449=================================
3450
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003451*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003452
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003453Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003454--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003455
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003456- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3457
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003458- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3459 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003460 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003461 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003462 a different meaning than before.
3463
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003464- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003465 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003466 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003467
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003468- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003469 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003470 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003471
3472- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3473 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3474 and deallocation.
3475
3476- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3477 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3478
3479- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3480 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3481 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3482 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3483 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3484
3485- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3486 now detected by the garbage collector.
3487
3488- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3489 [SF bug 519621]
3490
3491- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3492 identifier.
3493
3494- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3495 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3496 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3497 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3498 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3499 [SF bug 563060]
3500
3501- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3502 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3503 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3504 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3505 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3506
3507- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3508 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3509 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3510
3511- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3512
3513- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3514 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3515 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3516 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3517 state of the slots would be lost.)
3518
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003519Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003520-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003521
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003522- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003523 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3524 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3525 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3526 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003527 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3528 Jython 2.1.
3529
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003530- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003531 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003532 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3533 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3534 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3535 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3536 these, see PEP 302.
3537
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003538- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3539 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3540 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3541
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003542- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3543 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3544 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3545
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003546- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3547 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3548 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3549
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003550- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3551 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3552 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3553 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3554 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3555 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3556 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3557 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3558 releases or implementations.
3559
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003560- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003561 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3562 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003563
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003564- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3565 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3566
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003567- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3568 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3569 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3570
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003571- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3572 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3573
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003574- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3575 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003576 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3577 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003578
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003579- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3580 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3581 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3582 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3583 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3584
3585 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3586 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3587 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3588 pattern.
3589
3590 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3591 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3592 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3593 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3594
3595 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3596 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3597 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3598 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3599 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3600 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3601
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003602- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3603 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3604 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3605 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3606 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3607 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3608 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3609 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003610
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003611- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3612 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3613 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3614 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3615 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003616 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3617 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3618 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3619 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3620 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3621 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3622 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003623
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003624- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3625 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3626
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003627- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3628 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3629 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3630 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3631 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3632 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3633 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3634 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3635 to Zack Weinberg!
3636
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003637- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3638 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3639 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3640 type. This has been fixed now.
3641
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003642- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3643 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3644 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3645
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003646- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3647 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3648 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3649 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3650 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3651 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3652 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3653 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003654 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003655
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003656- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3657 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3658 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003659
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003660- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3661 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3662 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3663 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3664 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3665 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3666 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3667 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003668 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003669 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3670 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3671
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003672- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3673 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3674 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3675 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3676 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3677 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3678 this.)
3679
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003680- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3681 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003682 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003683 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003684 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3685 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003686 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3687 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003688
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003689- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3690 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3691 currently running.
3692
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003693- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3694 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3695 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3696 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3697
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003698- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3699 as directory names.
3700
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003701- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3702 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3703
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003704- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3705 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3706
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003707- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003708 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3709 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003710
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003711- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3712 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3713 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3714 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3715 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3716
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003717- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3718 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3719 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3720 removed.
3721
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003722- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3723 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3724 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3725
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003726- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3727 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3728 to __debug__.
3729
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003730- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3731 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3732 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3733
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003734- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3735 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3736 deprecated now.
3737
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003738- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3739 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3740 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003741
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003742- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3743 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3744 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3745 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3746 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003747
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003748- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3749 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3750
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003751- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3752 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3753 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003754 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003755 is backward compatible.
3756
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003757- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3758 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3759 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3760 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3761 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3762
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003763- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3764 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3765 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3766 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3767 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3768 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003769
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003770- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3771 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3772
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003773- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3774 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3775
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003776- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3777 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3778 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3779 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3780 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3781
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003782- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3783 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3784 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3785
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003786- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003787 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3788
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003789- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3790 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3791 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003792
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003793- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3794 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3795
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003796- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3797 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3798 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3799
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003800- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3801
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003802Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003803-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003804
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003805- Added three operators to the operator module:
3806 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3807 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3808 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3809
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003810- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3811
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003812- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3813 archives.
3814
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003815- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3816 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3817 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3818
3819 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3820
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003821- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3822 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3823 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003824 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003825
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003826- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3827 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3828 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3829 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003830 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3831 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3832 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3833 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003834
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003835- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3836 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003837
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003838- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3839
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003840- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3841 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3842
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003843- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3844 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3845 supported.
3846
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003847- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3848
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003849- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3850 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003851
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003852- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3853 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3854
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003855- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3856
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003857- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3858 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3859
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003860- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3861 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3862 functions but callable type objects.
3863
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003864- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003865 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003866 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003867
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003868- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3869 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003870
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003871- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3872 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003873
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003874- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3875 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3876 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3877 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3878
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003879- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3880 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003881
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003882- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3883 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3884 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3885 and __imul__.
3886
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003887- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003888 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3889 is called.
3890
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003891- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3892 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3893 interpreter was compiled.
3894
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003895- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3896 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3897 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003898 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003899 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3900 1, not 2.
3901
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003902- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3903 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3904 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3905 limit.
3906
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003907- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3908 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3909 bug #623464.
3910
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003911- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3912 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3913 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3914 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3915
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003916Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003917-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003918
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003919- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3920
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003921- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3922 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3923 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3924 with Python 2.3a2.
3925
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003926- os.path exposes getctime.
3927
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003928- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003929 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003930 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003931 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003932 unit tests of floating point results.
3933
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003934- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3935 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3936 has been increased.
3937
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003938- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3939 executed.
3940
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003941- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3942 postinstallation script.
3943
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003944- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3945 test the current module.
3946
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003947- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003948 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3949 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3950 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3951 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3952
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003953- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003954 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003955 Ward's Optik package.
3956
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003957- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3958 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3959 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3960 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3961
3962- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3963 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003964 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003965
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003966- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3967 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3968 shelf are binary pickles.
3969
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003970- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3971 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3972
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003973- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3974 modules are iterators now.
3975
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003976- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3977 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3978 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3979 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3980 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3981 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003982
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003983- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3984 with their entity value.
3985
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003986- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3987
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003988- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3989 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003990
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003991- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3992 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003993 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003994
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003995- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3996 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3997 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3998 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3999 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4000 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4001 main():
4002
4003 import locale
4004 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4005
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004006- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4007 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4008
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004009- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4010 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4011 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4012 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4013 to the new standard.
4014
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004015- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4016 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4017 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4018 an extension to the database.
4019
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004020- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4021 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4022 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4023 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004024 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004025
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004026- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004027 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004028
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004029- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4030 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4031 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4032 bounded integers.
4033
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004034- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4035 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4036 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4037 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4038 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4039 in existence.
4040
4041 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4042 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4043 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4044 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4045 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4046 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4047
4048 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4049 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4050 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4051 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4052
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004053- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4054 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4055 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4056
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004057- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4058
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004059- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4060 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4061 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4062 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4063
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004064- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4065 argument.
4066
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004067- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4068 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4069 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4070 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4071 [SF patch 560794].
4072
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004073- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4074 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4075 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004076 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4077 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4078 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004079
4080- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4081 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004082
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004083- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4084 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4085 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4086 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004087
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004088- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4089 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4090 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4091 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4092 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4093
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004094- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004095
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004096- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4097
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004098- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4099 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4100 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4101 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4102 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4103 identical to None.
4104
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004105- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4106 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4107 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4108 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4109 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4110 results now.
4111
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004112- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4113 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4114
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004115- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4116 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4117 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4118 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4119 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4120 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4121 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4122 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4123
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004124- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4125
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004126- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4127 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4128
4129- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4130 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4131 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4132 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4133 and other systems.
4134
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004135- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4136 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4137 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4138 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 +00004139 work well with these.
4140
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004141- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4142
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004143- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004144 connections.
4145
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004146- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4147 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4148 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4149
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004150- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4151 sets
4152
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004153- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4154 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4155 name.
4156
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004157- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4158 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4159 passed in.
4160
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004161- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004162 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004163 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4164 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004165
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004166- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4167
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004168- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4169
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004170- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4171 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4172 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4173
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004174- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4175 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4176 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4177 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004178 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004179
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004180- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004181 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004182 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004183
4184- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4185 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4186 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4187
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004188- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004189 the value of its expression argument.
4190
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004191- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4192 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4193 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4194
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004195- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4196 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4197 skipstone browser was included.
4198
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004199- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4200 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4201
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004202Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004203-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004204
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004205- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4206 names in addition to accepting file names.
4207
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004208- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4209 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4210 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4211 still used and useful.)
4212
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004213- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4214 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4215 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4216 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004217
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004218- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4219 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4220 the generated binary.
4221
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004222Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004223-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004224
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004225- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4226
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004227- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4228 except in the hands of experts.
4229
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004230- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004231 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4232 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4233 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004234
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004235- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4236 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4237 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4238 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4239 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4240 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4241 builds.
4242
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004243- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4244 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4245 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4246 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4247 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4248 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4249 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4250 new type.
4251
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004252- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004253
4254 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4255 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4256 positive infinities.
4257
4258 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4259 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4260 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4261 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4262 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4263 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4264 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4265
4266 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4267
4268 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4269
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004270- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4271 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4272 size of the executable.
4273
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004274- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4275 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4276 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4277 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004278
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004279- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4280
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004281- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4282 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4283 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004284
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004285- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4286 well as Unix.
4287
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004288- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4289 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4290 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4291 modules in the README file for details.
4292
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004293C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004294-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004295
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004296- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4297 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004298 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004299 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004300 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004301
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004302- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4303 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4304 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4305 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4306 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4307 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004308 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004309 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4310 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4311 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4312 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4313 aligned.)
4314
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004315- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4316 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4317 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4318
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004319- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4320 level.
4321
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004322- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4323 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4324 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4325 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4326 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4327
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004328- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4329 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4330 code.
4331
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004332- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4333 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4334 adjusting for negative indices.
4335
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004336- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4337 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4338 object.
4339
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004340- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4341 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4342 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4343
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004344- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4345 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004346
4347- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4348
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004349- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4350 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4351 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4352 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4353
4354- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4355
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004356- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004357
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004358- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004359 without going through the buffer API.
4360
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004361- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004362
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004363- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4364 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4365 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4366 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4367
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004368- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4369 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4370
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004371- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004372 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4373
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004374New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004375-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004376
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004377- OpenVMS is now supported.
4378
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004379- AtheOS is now supported.
4380
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004381- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4382
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004383- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4384
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004385Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004386-----
4387
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004388- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4389 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4390 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004391
4392Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004393-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004394
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004395- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4396 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4397 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4398 bugs.
4399 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004400 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004401 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4402 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004403 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004404
4405- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004406 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004407
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004408- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4409 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4410
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004411- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4412 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004413 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004414 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4415
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004416- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4417 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4418 use files" uninstall option).
4419
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004420- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4421
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004422- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4423 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4424
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004425- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4426 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4427 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4428
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004429- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4430 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4431 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4432 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4433 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004434 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4435 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4436 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004437
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004438- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004439 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004440 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4441 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4442 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4443 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4444 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4445 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4446 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4447 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4448 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4449 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4450 work around.
4451
4452- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4453 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4454 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4455 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4456 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4457 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4458 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4459 specified with O_CREAT too).
4460
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004461Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004462----
4463
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004464- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004465
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004466- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4467 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4468 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4469
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004470- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4471 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4472 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4473
4474- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4475 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4476 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4477 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4478 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4479 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4480 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4481 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004482
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004483- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4484 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4485 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004486
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004487- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4488 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4489 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4490 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4491 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004492
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004493- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4494 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4495 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004496
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004497- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4498 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004499
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004500- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4501 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4502 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4503 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4504 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004505
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004506- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4507 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4508 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4509
4510- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4511 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4512 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004513
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004514- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4515 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4516 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4517 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004518 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004519
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004520- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4521 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004522
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004523- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4524 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004525
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004526- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004527 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004528 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4529 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004530
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004531
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004532What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004533===============================
4534
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004535*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4536
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004537Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004538--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004539
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004540- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4541 with a custom metaclass.
4542
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004543Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004544-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004545
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004546- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4547 are proxies.
4548
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004549Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004550-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004551
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004552- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4553 very short strings.
4554
4555- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4556 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4557 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4558 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4559 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4560
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004561Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004562-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004563
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004564- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4565 close or delete time).
4566
4567- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4568 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4569
4570- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4571
4572- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004573 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004574
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004575Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004576-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004577
4578Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004579-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004580
4581C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004582-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004583
4584New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004585-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004586
4587Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004588-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004589
4590Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004591-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004592
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004593- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4594
4595- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4596 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4597
4598- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4599 deleted at process exit time.
4600
4601- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4602 in backslash.
4603
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004604Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004605----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004606
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004607- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4608 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4609 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4610
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004611
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004612What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004613===========================
4614
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004615*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4616
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004617Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004618--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004619
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004620- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4621 been extensively updated. See
4622
4623 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4624
4625 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4626
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004627- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4628 deleted!
4629
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004630- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4631 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4632 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4633 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4634 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4635
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004636- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4637
4638 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4639 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4640
4641 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4642 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4643 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4644 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4645 supported anyway.
4646
4647 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4648 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4649
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004650- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4651 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4652 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4653 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4654 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004655
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004656- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4657 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4658 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4659
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004660Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004661-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004662
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004663- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4664 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4665 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4666 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4667 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4668 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004669 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4670 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4671 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4672 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004673
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004674- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4675 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4676 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4677
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004678Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004679-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004680
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004681- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4682
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004683Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004684-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004685
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004686- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4687 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4688 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4689 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4690 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4691 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4692
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004693- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4694
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004695- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4696
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004697- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4698
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004699- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4700 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4701 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4702
4703- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4704
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004705Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004706-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004707
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004708- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4709 off a search on Google.
4710
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004711Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004712-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004713
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004714- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4715 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4716 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4717 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4718 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4719 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4720 other platforms should do likewise.
4721
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004722- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4723 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4724 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4725
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004726C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004727-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004728
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004729- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4730 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4731 producing key-value pairs.
4732
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004733- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004734 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004735 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4736 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4737 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4738 previously went unchallenged.
4739
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004740New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004741-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004742
4743Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004744-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004745
4746Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004747-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004748
4749Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004750----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004751
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004752- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4753 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004754
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004755- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4756 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4757 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4758 home.
4759
4760
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004761What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004762===========================
4763
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004764*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4765
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004766Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004767--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004768
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004769- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4770 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004771
4772 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004773 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004774
4775 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4776 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004777 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004778 This needs to be documented.
4779
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004780- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4781 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4782
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004783- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4784 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4785 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4786
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004787- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4788 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4789
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004790- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4791 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4792 class forbids it).
4793
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004794- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4795 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4796 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4797
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004798- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4799
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004800Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004801-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004802
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004803- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4804 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004805 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004806
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004807- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4808 (like 1 + '').
4809
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004810Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004811-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004812
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004813- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4814 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4815 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4816 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004817 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004818 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4819
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004820- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4821 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4822 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4823 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4824
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004825- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4826 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004827 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4828 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4829 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004830
4831- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4832 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004833
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004834- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4835 bytes on its input.
4836
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004837Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004838-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004839
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004840- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004841 convenience function.
4842
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004843- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4844 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4845 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004846 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4847 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4848 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4849 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4850 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4851 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004852
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004853- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4854 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4855 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4856 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4857
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004858- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4859 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4860 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4861
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004862- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4863 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4864 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4865 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4866
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004867- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4868 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004869 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004870 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4871 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4872 new -l and -e options.
4873
4874- statcache is now deprecated.
4875
4876- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4877 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004878 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004879 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4880 time properly taken into account.
4881
4882- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4883 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4884 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4885 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4886
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004887Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004888-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004889
4890Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004891-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004892
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004893- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4894 is built with libdb3 if available.
4895
4896- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4897
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004898C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004899-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004900
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004901- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4902 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4903 PySequence_Size().
4904
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004905- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4906
4907- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4908 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4909 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4910
4911- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4912 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4913
4914- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4915 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4916
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004917New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004918-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004919
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004920- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4921 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4922
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004923- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4924 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4925
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004926- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4927
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004928Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004929-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004930
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004931- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4932 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4933
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004934Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004935-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004936
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004937Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004938----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004939
4940- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4941 removed completely in the next release.
4942
4943- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4944 OSX.
4945
4946- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4947 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4948
4949- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4950
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004951
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004952What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004953===========================
4954
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004955*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4956
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004957Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004958--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004959
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004960- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004961 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004962 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004963 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4964 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004965 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4966 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004967 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4968 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004969
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004970- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4971 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4972
4973- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4974 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4975
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004976Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004977-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004978
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004979- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4980 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4981 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4982 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4983 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4984 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4985 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4986 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4987
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004988- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4989 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4990 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4991 example).
4992
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004993- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004994 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004995 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004996 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004997
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004998- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4999 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5000 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005001 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005002
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005003- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5004 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5005 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5006 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5007 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5008 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5009
5010 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5011
5012 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5013
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005014Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005015-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005016
5017- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5018
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005019- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5020
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005021- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5022 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005023
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005024- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5025 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5026 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5027 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5028 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5029 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005030 attributes.
5031
5032- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5033 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5034 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005035
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005036- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5037 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5038 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005039
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005040- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5041 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5042 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005043 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5044 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5045
5046- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5047 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005048
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005049Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005050-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005051
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005052- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5053 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5054
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005055- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5056 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5057 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5058 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5059
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005060- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5061 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5062 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5063 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5064
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005065 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5066 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5067 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5068 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5069 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5070 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5071 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5072 without losing information).
5073
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005074- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005075 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5076 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5077 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5078 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5079 module).
5080
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005081 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005082 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5083 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5084 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5085 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005086
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005087- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005088 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5089 encoding.
5090
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005091- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5092 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5093
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005094- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005095 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5096
5097- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5098 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5099 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5100 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5101
5102- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5103
5104- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5105 ON, and OFF.
5106
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005107- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5108 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5109
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005110Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005111-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005112
5113- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5114 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5115 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005116
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005117- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5118 been added: -X and -E.
5119
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005120Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005121-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005122
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005123- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5124 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5125
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005126C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005127-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005128
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005129- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5130 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5131 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5132 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5133 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5134
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005135- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5136 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5137 as long) arguments.
5138
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005139- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5140 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5141 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5142 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5143 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5144 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5145
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005146- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5147 input.
5148
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005149New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005150-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005151
5152Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005153-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005154
5155Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005156-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005157
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005158- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5159 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5160 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5161
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005162- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5163 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5164 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005165 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005166
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005167 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5168 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5169 import signal
5170 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005171
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005172 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005173 while 1:
5174 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005175 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005176 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5177 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5178 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5179 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005180
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005181
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005182What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5183===========================
5184
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005185*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5186
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005187Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005188--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005189
5190- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5191 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5192 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5193
5194- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5195 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5196 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5197 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5198 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5199 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5200 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005201
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005202- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005203 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005204 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5205 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5206 associate a docstring with a property.
5207
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005208- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5209 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5210 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5211 other built-in object types.
5212
5213- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5214 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5215 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5216 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5217 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5218
5219- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5220 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5221
5222- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5223 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005224 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005225 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5226 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5227 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5228 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5229 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5230
5231- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5232 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5233 class.
5234
5235- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5236 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5237 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5238 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5239
5240- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5241 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5242 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5243 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5244
5245- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5246 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5247
5248- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5249 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5250 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5251 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5252 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005253 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005254 with the same value as s.
5255
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005256- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5257
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005258Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005259----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005260
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005261- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5262
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005263- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5264 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5265 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5266 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5267 objects.
5268
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005269- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5270 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005271 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5272 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5273
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005274- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5275 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5276 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5277
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005278Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005279-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005280
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005281- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5282 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5283 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5284 by the instances.
5285
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005286- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5287 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5288 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5289
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005290- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5291 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5292 before the entire comparison is complete.
5293
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005294- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5295 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5296 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5297
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005298- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5299 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5300 getwriter().
5301
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005302- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5303 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5304
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005305- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005306 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5307 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5308
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005309- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5310 iterable object.
5311
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005312- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5313 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005314
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005315- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5316 authentication.
5317
5318- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5319 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005320
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005321- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005322 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5323 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5324 a sample driver.)
5325
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005326Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005327-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005328
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005329- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5330 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5331 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5332 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5333 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5334 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5335 kernel has large file support.
5336
5337- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5338 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5339 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5340 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5341 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5342
5343- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5344 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5345 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5346
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005347C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005348-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005349
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005350- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5351 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5352
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005353New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005354-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005355
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005356- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5357 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5358
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005359Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005360-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005361
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005362- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5363 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5364 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5365 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5366 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5367
5368- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5369 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5370 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5371 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5372
5373- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5374 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5375
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005376Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005377-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005378
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005379- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005380 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5381 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005382
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005383
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005384What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5385===========================
5386
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005387*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5388
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005389Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005390----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005391
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005392- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5393 big to represent as a C double.
5394
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005395- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5396 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5397 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5398 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5399 restriction).
5400
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005401- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5402 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5403 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5404 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5405 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5406
5407 >>> dir([])
5408 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5409 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5410 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5411 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5412 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5413 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5414 'reverse', 'sort']
5415
5416 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5417
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005418- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005419 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5420 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5421 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5422 OverflowError exception.
5423
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005424- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005425 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005426 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5427 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5428 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5429 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5430 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005431 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005432 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5433 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5434
5435 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5436 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5437 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5438 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005439
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005440- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005441 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5442 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5443 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5444 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5445 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5446 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5447 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5448 once it is created.
5449
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005450- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5451 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5452 (key, value) pairs.
5453
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005454- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005455 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5456 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5457
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005458- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5459 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5460 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5461 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5462 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005463
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005464- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005465 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5466 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5467
5468 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5469
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005470- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005471 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5472
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005473Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005474-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005475
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005476- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005477 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5478 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005479
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005480- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5481 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5482 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5483 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5484 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5485 in this area anymore).
5486
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005487- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5488 threading.Timer.
5489
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005490- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5491 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5492
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005493- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005494 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5495
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005496- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005497 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5498 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5499 converted to Python longs.
5500
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005501- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005502 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5503
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005504- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5505 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5506 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5507
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005508Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005509-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005510
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005511- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5512 division operators as per PEP 238.
5513
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005514Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005515-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005516
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005517- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5518 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5519 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5520 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5521
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005522C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005523-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005524
5525- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005526
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005527- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5528 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005529 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005530
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005531 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5532 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005533 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005534 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005535
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005536- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005537 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5538 module:
5539
5540 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005541
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005542 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5543 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005544
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005545 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5546 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005547
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005548 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5549
5550 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5551
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005552- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005553 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5554 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5555 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005556
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005557New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005558-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005559
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005560- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5561 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5562 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5563 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5564 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005565
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005566Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005567-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005568
5569Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005570-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005571
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005572- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5573 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5574 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5575 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005576 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5577 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5578 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5579 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5580 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005581
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005582- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005583 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5584
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005585
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005586What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5587===========================
5588
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005589*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5590
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005591Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005592-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005593
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005594- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5595 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5596
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005597- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5598 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5599 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005600
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005601- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5602 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5603 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5604 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005605
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005606- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5607
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005608- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005609
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005610Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005611-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005612
5613- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005614 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005615 the module docstring for details.
5616
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005617Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005618-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005619
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005620- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005621 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5622 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5623 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005624
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005625- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5626 Nick Mathewson.
5627
5628Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005629----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005630
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005631- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5632 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5633 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5634 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5635 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5636 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5637 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5638 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5639
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005640- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5641 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5642 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5643 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5644
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005645- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5646 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5647 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5648 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5649 come a long way).
5650
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005651- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5652 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5653 write filters for these warnings).
5654
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005655- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5656 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5657 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5658 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5659 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5660
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005661- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5662 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5663 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5664 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5665 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5666 older distribution.
5667
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005668Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005669-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005670
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005671- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5672 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005673 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005674
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005675- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5676 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5677 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5678
5679- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5680
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005681- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5682
5683- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5684
5685- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5686
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005687- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005688
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005689- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5690
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005691New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005692-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005693
5694C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005695-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005696
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005697- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5698 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5699 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5700 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5701 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5702 against buffer overruns.
5703
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005704- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005705 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5706 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005707 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5708 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5709 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5710
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005711- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5712 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5713 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5714 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5715 deprecated.
5716
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005717Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005718-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005719
5720- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5721 relevant is found.
5722
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005723
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005724What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005725===========================
5726
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005727*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5728
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005729Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005730----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005731
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005732- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5733 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5734 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5735 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5736 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5737 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5738 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5739 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005740 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005741 repaired.
5742
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005743- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005744 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005745 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5746 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5747 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5748 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5749 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5750 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5751 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5752 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5753
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005754- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5755 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5756 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5757 leading BMO character).
5758
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005759- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5760 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5761 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5762
5763 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5764 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5765 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005766
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005767 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5768 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5769 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5770 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5771 for various simple to use conversions.
5772
5773 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5774 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5775
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005776 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5777 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5778 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5779 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5780 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5781 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5782 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5783 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5784 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5785 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5786 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5787 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5788 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5789 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5790 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005791
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005792- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5793 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5794 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005795 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005796 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005797
5798 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005799 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5800 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5801 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5802 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5803 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005804 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5805 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005806
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005807 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5808 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5809 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005810 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005811
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005812- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5813 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5814 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5815 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5816 floating arithmetic,
5817
5818 x = 9007199254740992.0
5819 print long(x)
5820
5821 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5822 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5823 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5824 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5825 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5826 functions are of good quality).
5827
5828 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5829 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5830 algorithms to break.
5831
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005832- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5833 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5834 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5835 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5836 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5837 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5838 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5839 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5840 order.
5841
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005842- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5843 operation along the most common code paths.
5844
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005845- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5846 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5847
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005848- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5849 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5850 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5851 {}.update(UserDict())
5852
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005853- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5854 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5855 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5856 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5857 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5858 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5859 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5860 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5861
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005862- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005863 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005864
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005865 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005866 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5867 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005868 join() method of strings
5869 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005870 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5871 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005872 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005873 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005874
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005875- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5876 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5877
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005878- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5879 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5880
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005881- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5882 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5883 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5884 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5885
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005886- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5887 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005888 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005889 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5890 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005891
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005892- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5893
5894
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005895Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005896-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005897
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005898- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005899 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005900 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5901 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5902
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005903- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5904 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5905
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005906- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5907 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5908 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5909 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5910
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005911- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5912 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5913 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5914
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005915- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5916
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005917- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5918
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005919- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5920 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5921 that are still imported into string.py).
5922
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005923- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5924
5925- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5926 Now it does.
5927
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005928- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5929
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005930- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5931 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5932 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5933 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5934 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005935 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5936 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005937
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005938- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5939 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5940 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5941 'help(object)'.
5942
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005943Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005944-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005945
5946- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005947 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005948 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5949 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5950
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005951- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005952 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5953 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005954
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005955C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005956-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005957
5958- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5959 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005960
5961----
5962
5963**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**