blob: 98b21625df157baa31dc88bb4316924c386ed64c [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
Tim Peterscf79aac2006-03-16 01:14:46 +000015- Patch #1123430: Python's small-object allocator now returns an arena to
16 the system ``free()`` when all memory within an arena becomes unused
17 again. Prior to Python 2.5, arenas (256KB chunks of memory) were never
18 freed. Some applications will see a drop in virtual memory size now,
19 especially long-running applications that, from time to time, temporarily
20 use a large number of small objects. Note that when Python returns an
21 arena to the platform C's ``free()``, there's no guarantee that the
22 platform C will in turn return that memory to the operating system. The
23 effect of the patch is to stop making that impossible, and in tests it
24 appears to be effective at least on Microsoft C and gcc-based systems.
25 Thanks to Evan Jones for hard work and patience.
26
Georg Brandl533ff6f2006-03-08 18:09:27 +000027- Patch #1434038: property() now uses the getter's docstring if there is
28 no "doc" argument given. This makes it possible to legitimately use
29 property() as a decorator to produce a read-only property.
30
Guido van Rossum9aa37ab2006-03-07 18:54:08 +000031- PEP 357, patch 1436368: add an __index__ method to int/long and a matching
32 nb_index slot to the PyNumberMethods struct. The slot is consulted instead
33 of requiring an int or long in slicing and a few other contexts, enabling
34 other objects (e.g. Numeric Python's integers) to be used as slice indices.
35
Neal Norwitz995acdf2006-03-07 05:01:00 +000036- Fixed various bugs reported by Coverity's Prevent tool.
37
Brett Cannonbf364092006-03-01 04:25:17 +000038- PEP 352, patch #1104669: Make exceptions new-style objects. Introduced the
39 new exception base class, BaseException, which has a new message attribute.
40 KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit to directly inherit from BaseException now.
41 Raising a string exception now raises a DeprecationWarning.
42
Thomas Woutersfb609f42006-02-28 16:37:25 +000043- Patch #1438387, PEP 328: relative and absolute imports. Imports can now be
44 explicitly relative, using 'from .module import name' to mean 'from the same
45 package as this module is in. Imports without dots still default to the
46 old relative-then-absolute, unless 'from __future__ import
47 absolute_import' is used.
48
Brett Cannona7446e32006-02-27 23:39:10 +000049- Properly check if 'warnings' raises an exception (usually when a filter set
50 to "error" is triggered) when raising a warning for raising string
51 exceptions.
52
Neal Norwitz0023a2f2006-02-27 23:24:48 +000053- CO_GENERATOR_ALLOWED is no longer defined, this behavior is the default.
54 The name was removed from Include/code.h.
55
Neal Norwitzeb651252006-02-27 16:47:12 +000056- PEP 308: conditional expressions were added (x if cond else y).
57
Guido van Rossum1968ad32006-02-25 22:38:04 +000058- Patch 1433928:
59 - The copy module now "copies" function objects (as atomic objects).
60 - dict.__getitem__ now looks for a __missing__ hook before raising
61 KeyError.
62
Tim Peters84ef21c2006-02-28 20:39:06 +000063- PEP 343: with statement implemented. Needs ``from __future__ import
64 with_statement``. Use of 'with' as a variable will generate a warning.
65 Use of 'as' as a variable will also generate a warning (unless it's
Neal Norwitz055ec242006-02-28 20:06:49 +000066 part of an import statement).
Guido van Rossum1a5e21e2006-02-28 21:57:43 +000067 The following objects have __context__ methods:
68 - The built-in file type.
69 - The thread.LockType type.
70 - The following types defined by the threading module:
71 Lock, RLock, Condition, Semaphore, BoundedSemaphore.
72 - The decimal.Context class.
Guido van Rossumc2e20742006-02-27 22:32:47 +000073
Marc-André Lemburgfe4b34c2006-02-19 15:22:22 +000074- Fix the encodings package codec search function to only search
75 inside its own package. Fixes problem reported in patch #1433198.
76
77 Note: Codec packages should implement and register their own
78 codec search function. PEP 100 has the details.
79
Martin v. Löwis18e16552006-02-15 17:27:45 +000080- PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type.
81
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000082- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
83 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
84 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
85
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000086- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
87 configure would break checking curses.h.
88
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000089- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
90 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
91
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000092- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
93
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000094- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
95
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000096- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
97
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000098- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
99 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
100
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +0000101- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
Barry Warsawd3c38ff2006-03-07 09:46:03 +0000102 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.subversion. Build number
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +0000103 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
104
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +0000105- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
106 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +0000107 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +0000108
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +0000109- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
110 now encodes backslash correctly.
111
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +0000112- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
113
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +0000114- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
115 and long longs.
116
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +0000117- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
118 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
119 message in this case.
120
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +0000121- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
122 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
123 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
124 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
125 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
126
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000127- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +0000128
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000129- Speed up some Unicode operations.
130
Martin v. Löwisbd260da2006-02-26 19:42:26 +0000131- A new AST parser implementation was completed. The abstract
132 syntax tree is available for read-only (non-compile) access
Martin v. Löwis577b5b92006-02-27 15:23:19 +0000133 to Python code; an _ast module was added.
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000134
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +0000135- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +0000136 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
137
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +0000138- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
139
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +0000140- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
141 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
142
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +0000143- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
144
145- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
146
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +0000147- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
148 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
149 was empty.
150
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +0000151- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
152 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
153
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +0000154- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +0000155 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +0000156
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +0000157- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
158 codes.
159
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +0000160- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
161 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
162 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
163
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +0000164- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
165 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
166
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +0000167- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +0000168 (fixes bug #1119418).
169
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000170- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
171
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000172- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
173 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
174
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000175- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
176 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
177 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
178
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000179- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
180
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000181- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
182 reference counts in some error exit cases.
183
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000184- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
185 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
186 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
187 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
188 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
189 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
190 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
191 realloc.
192
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000193- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
194 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
195
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000196- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
197 like their int counterparts.
198
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000199- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
200 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
201 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
202 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
203 for a longer write-up of the problem).
204
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000205- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
206 serializing floats.
207
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000208- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
209 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
210 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
211
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000212- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
213 278.
214
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000215- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
216 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
217 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
218 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000219 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000220 PyNumber_*().
221 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
222
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000223- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
224 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
225 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
226 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
227
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000228- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
229 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
230 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
231 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
232 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
233
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000234- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
235 disabled caused a crash.
236
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000237- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
238 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
239
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000240- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000241 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
242
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000243- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
244
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000245- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000246 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
247 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
248 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000249
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000250- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
251
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000252- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
253 returning None.
254
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000255- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000256 ('\') with a specific error message.
257
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000258- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
259
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000260- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
261 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
262
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000263- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000264 an ferror() call.
265
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000266- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
267 list.sort().
268
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000269- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
270 (2+3) --> (5).
271
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000272- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
273
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000274- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
275 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000276
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000277- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
278 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
279 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
280
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000281- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
282 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
283 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
284
Tim Petersf4e69282006-02-27 17:15:31 +0000285- Patch #1413181: changed ``PyThreadState_Delete()`` to forget about the
286 current thread state when the auto-GIL-state machinery knows about
287 it (since the thread state is being deleted, continuing to remember it
288 can't help, but can hurt if another thread happens to get created with
289 the same thread id).
290
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000291Extension Modules
292-----------------
293
Georg Brandlbc45a3f2006-03-17 19:17:34 +0000294- RFE #567972: Socket objects' family, type and proto properties are
295 now exposed via new get...() methods.
296
Neal Norwitz10be10c2006-03-16 06:50:13 +0000297- Everything under lib-old was removed. This includes the following modules:
298 Para, addpack, cmp, cmpcache, codehack, dircmp, dump, find, fmt, grep,
299 lockfile, newdir, ni, packmail, poly, rand, statcache, tb, tzparse,
300 util, whatsound, whrandom, zmod
301
302- The following modules were removed: regsub, reconvert, regex, regex_syntax.
303
304- re and sre were swapped, so help(re) provides full help. importing sre
Neal Norwitzefbeaef2006-03-16 06:40:39 +0000305 is deprecated. The undocumented re.engine variable no longer exists.
306
Hye-Shik Changabb903f2006-03-13 10:20:08 +0000307- Bug #1448490: Fixed a bug that ISO-2022 codecs could not handle
308 SS2 (single-shift 2) escape sequences correctly.
309
Martin v. Löwis480f1bb2006-03-09 23:38:20 +0000310- The unicodedata module was updated to the 4.1 version of the Unicode
311 database. The 3.2 version is still available as unicodedata.db_3_2_0
312 for applications that require this specific version (such as IDNA).
313
Neal Norwitzb62c4332006-03-04 18:35:47 +0000314- The timing module is no longer built by default. It was deprecated
315 in PEP 4 in Python 2.0 or earlier.
316
Guido van Rossum1968ad32006-02-25 22:38:04 +0000317- Patch 1433928: Added a new type, defaultdict, to the collections module.
318 This uses the new __missing__ hook behavior added to dict (see above).
319
Georg Brandldbd83392006-02-20 09:42:33 +0000320- Bug #854823: socketmodule now builds on Sun platforms even when
321 INET_ADDRSTRLEN is not defined.
322
Georg Brandlf4f44152006-02-18 22:29:33 +0000323- Patch #1393157: os.startfile() now has an optional argument to specify
324 a "command verb" to invoke on the file.
325
Neal Norwitz082b2df2006-02-07 07:04:46 +0000326- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
327 is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
328
Neal Norwitz0e6bc8c2006-02-05 05:45:43 +0000329- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
330 mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
331 mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
332
Martin v. Löwis57a34e82006-02-04 19:12:37 +0000333- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
334 than the system default domain.
335
Martin v. Löwis14694662006-02-03 12:54:16 +0000336- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
337 are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
338 WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
339
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000340- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
341
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000342- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
343 before the env.
344
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000345- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
346
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000347- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
348
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000349- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
350 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
351 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
352
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000353- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
354 without prior setting of the userptr.
355
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000356- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
357
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000358- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
359
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000360- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
361 problem on AIX.
362
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000363- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
364
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000365- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
366
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000367- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
368
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000369- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
370 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
371
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000372- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
373 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
374
375- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
376
377- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000378
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000379- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
380 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
381
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000382- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
383
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000384- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
385 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
386
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000387- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
388 returns in cStringIO.c.
389
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000390- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
391 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
392
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000393- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
394
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000395- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
396
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000397- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
398 the file system encoding.
399
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000400- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
401 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000402
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000403- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
404
405- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000406 line without newlines.
407
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000408- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
409 on Windows.
410
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000411- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000412 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
413
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000414- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
415 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
416 for large or negative values.
417
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000418- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000419 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000420
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000421- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
422
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000423- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
424 if available on the platform.
425
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000426- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
427 available on the platform.
428
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000429- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
430 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
431
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000432- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
433
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000434- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
435 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
436 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
437
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000438- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
439
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000440- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
441 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
442
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000443- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000444 file size.
445
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000446- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
447
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000448- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
449 {remove_history,replace_history}
450
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000451- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
452 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000453
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000454- stat_float_times is now True.
455
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000456- array.array objects are now picklable.
457
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000458- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
459 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
460
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000461- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
462 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
463 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
464
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000465- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
466 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000467
468Library
469-------
470
Walter Dörwaldabb02e52006-03-15 11:35:15 +0000471- Patch #1436130: codecs.lookup() now returns a CodecInfo object (a subclass
472 of tuple) that provides incremental decoders and encoders (a way to use
473 stateful codecs without the stream API). Functions
474 codecs.getincrementaldecoder() and codecs.getincrementalencoder() have
475 been added.
476
Walter Dörwald067db482006-03-15 22:17:27 +0000477- Patch #1359365: Calling next() on a closed StringIO.String object raises
478 a ValueError instead of a StopIteration now (like file and cString.String do).
479 cStringIO.StringIO.isatty() will raise a ValueError now if close() has been
480 called before (like file and StringIO.StringIO do).
Walter Dörwald197e8322006-03-15 22:13:13 +0000481
Martin v. Löwis04824ce2006-03-10 21:26:16 +0000482- A regrtest option -w was added to re-run failed tests in verbose mode.
483
Georg Brandle2b46772006-03-09 23:22:43 +0000484- Patch #1446372: quit and exit can now be called from the interactive
485 interpreter to exit.
486
Barry Warsawd3c38ff2006-03-07 09:46:03 +0000487- The function get_count() has been added to the gc module, and gc.collect()
488 grew an optional 'generation' argument.
489
Martin v. Löwisfbab90e2006-03-05 13:36:04 +0000490- A library msilib to generate Windows Installer files, and a distutils
491 command bdist_msi have been added.
492
Guido van Rossum1a5e21e2006-02-28 21:57:43 +0000493- PEP 343: new module contextlib.py defines decorator @contextmanager
494 and helpful context managers nested() and closing().
495
Martin v. Löwis415ed932006-02-27 19:56:30 +0000496- The compiler package now supports future imports after the module docstring.
497
Georg Brandl8f7c54e2006-02-20 08:40:38 +0000498- Bug #1413790: zipfile now sanitizes absolute archive names that are
499 not allowed by the specs.
500
Georg Brandlc98eeed2006-02-19 14:57:47 +0000501- Patch #1215184: FileInput now can be given an opening hook which can
502 be used to control how files are opened.
503
Georg Brandlc029f872006-02-19 14:12:34 +0000504- Patch #1212287: fileinput.input() now has a mode parameter for
505 specifying the file mode input files should be opened with.
506
Georg Brandl67e9fb92006-02-19 13:56:17 +0000507- Patch #1215184: fileinput now has a fileno() function for getting the
508 current file number.
509
Georg Brandl602b9ba2006-02-19 13:26:36 +0000510- Patch #1349274: gettext.install() now optionally installs additional
511 translation functions other than _() in the builtin namespace.
512
Georg Brandle4662172006-02-19 09:51:27 +0000513- Patch #1337756: fileinput now accepts Unicode filenames.
514
Georg Brandl7b4e7c22006-02-18 21:10:56 +0000515- Patch #1373643: The chunk module can now read chunks larger than
516 two gigabytes.
517
Georg Brandl21dd1af2006-02-17 13:35:13 +0000518- Patch #1417555: SimpleHTTPServer now returns Last-Modified headers.
519
Georg Brandlbd3bc4d2006-02-17 09:52:53 +0000520- Bug #1430298: It is now possible to send a mail with an empty
521 return address using smtplib.
522
Georg Brandl0e1abe22006-02-17 09:48:14 +0000523- Bug #1432260: The names of lambda functions are now properly displayed
524 in pydoc.
Georg Brandl501dd0d2006-02-17 09:45:40 +0000525
Martin v. Löwis00756902006-02-05 17:09:41 +0000526- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
527 unless the system is Win32.
528
Tim Petersda1329b2006-02-27 16:50:01 +0000529- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000530 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
531 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
532
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000533- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
534
535- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000536
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000537- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
538
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000539- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000540 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000541
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000542- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
543 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000544
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000545- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
546
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000547- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
548
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000549- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
550 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
551 LoadError subclasses IOError.
552
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000553- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000554 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
555 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
556 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
557 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
558
559 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
560 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
561 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
562 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
563 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000564
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000565- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
566 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
567 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
568
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000569- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
570
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000571- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
572
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000573- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
574 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
575 illegal argument)
576
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000577- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
578 is an error in the format string.
579
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000580- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
581
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000582- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000583 "parent" argument.
584
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000585- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
586 for padding.
587
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000588- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
589 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
590
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000591- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
592 to get the correct encoding.
593
594- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
595 languages.
596
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000597- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
598
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000599- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
600
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000601- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
602
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000603- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
604 functionality.
605
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000606- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
607
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000608- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
609 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
610
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000611- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
612 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
613 match the Content-Length header.
614
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000615- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
616
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000617- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
618 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000619 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000620
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000621- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
622
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000623- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
624
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000625- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
626 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
627
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000628- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
629 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
630 Tkdnd.
631
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000632- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
633 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
634
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000635- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
636 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
637
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000638- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000639 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
640
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000641- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
642 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
643
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000644- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
645 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
646
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000647- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000648 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000649
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000650- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
651
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000652- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
653 error messages.
654
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000655- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
656
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000657- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
658 Bug #1224621.
659
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000660- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
661 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
662 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
663 terminates by raising StopIteration.
664
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000665- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
666
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000667- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
668 component of the path.
669
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000670- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
671 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
672 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
673 class at all.
674
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000675- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
676 files to PyPI.
677
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000678- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
679 them to PyPI.
680
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000681- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
682 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
683 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
684 work as expected.
685
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000686- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
687 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
688
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000689- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000690 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
691
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000692- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
693
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000694- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
695 to build.
696
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000697- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
698 symbolic links on Windows.
699
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000700- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000701 profile.py if available.
702
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000703- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
704
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000705- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
706 in LWPCookieJar.
707
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000708- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
709
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000710- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
711
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000712- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
713
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000714- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
715
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000716- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
717
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000718- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
719
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000720- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
721
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000722- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
723
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000724- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
725 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
726 be exploited in various ways.
727
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000728- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000729 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
730
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000731- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
732 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
733
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000734- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000735 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
736
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000737- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
738
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000739- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
740
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000741- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
742
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000743- Enhancements to the csv module:
744
745 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000746 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000747 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000748 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
749 reporting.
750 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
751 dictates.
752 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000753 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000754 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000755 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
756 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000757 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
758 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000759 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000760 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
761 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
762 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
763 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
764 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
765 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
766 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
767 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
768 without first creating a dialect class.
769 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
770 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
771 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000772 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000773 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
774 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000775 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
776 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
777 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
778 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000779 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
780 This has been fixed.
781
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000782- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
783 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
784 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
785 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
786
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000787- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
788
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000789- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
790 (Bug #951915).
791
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000792- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
793 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
794 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000795 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000796
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000797- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
798
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000799- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
800 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
801
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000802- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
803
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000804- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
805
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000806- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
807
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000808- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
809
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000810- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
811
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000812- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
813 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
814 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
815
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000816- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000817 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000818
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000819- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
820 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
821 tokenizer with very long source lines.
822
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000823- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
824 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
825 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000826
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000827- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
828 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000829
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000830- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
831 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
832
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000833- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
834 correctly.
835
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000836- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
837 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
838 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
839 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
840 between two lines.
841
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000842- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
843 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
844 handlers.
845
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000846- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000847 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
848 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000849
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000850- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
851 considering it exactly like a '*'.
852
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000853- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
854 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000855
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000856- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
857
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000858- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
859 touch the recursion limit.
860
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000861Build
862-----
863
Martin v. Löwis86d66262006-02-17 08:40:11 +0000864- Patch #1432345: Make python compile on DragonFly.
865
Martin v. Löwis856bf9a2006-02-14 20:42:55 +0000866- Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added.
867
Martin v. Löwisa55e55e2006-02-11 15:55:14 +0000868- Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library.
869
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000870- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
871
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000872- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
873 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
874
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000875- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
876
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000877- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
878 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
879
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000880- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
881 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
882
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000883- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
884 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
885 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000886 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000887
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000888- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
889 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
890 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
891
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000892- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
893
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000894- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
895 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
896
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000897- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
898 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
899 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
900 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
901 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
902 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
903 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
904 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
905
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000906- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
907 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
908 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
909 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
910
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000911C API
912-----
913
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000914- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
915
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000916- Removed PyRange_New().
917
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000918- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
919 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
920 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
921 mappings.
922
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000923
924Tests
925-----
926
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000927- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000928
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000929- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
930 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
931
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000932
933Documentation
934-------------
935
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000936- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
937
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000938- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
939 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
940
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000941- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
942
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000943- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
944
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000945- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
946
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000947- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
948
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000949- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
950
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000951- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
952
953- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
954
955- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
956
957- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
958
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000959- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
960 Closes bug #1166582.
961
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000962- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
963 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
964 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
965
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000966Mac
967---
968
969
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000970New platforms
971-------------
972
973- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
974
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000975
976Tools/Demos
977-----------
978
Brett Cannonacde7342006-03-01 04:28:00 +0000979- Created Misc/Vim/vim_syntax.py to auto-generate a python.vim file in that
980 directory for syntax highlighting in Vim. Vim directory was added and placed
981 vimrc to it (was previous up a level).
982
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000983- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
984 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
985 source files that need an encoding declaration.
986 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
987
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000988- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
989
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000990- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000991
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000992- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
993 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000994
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000995What's New in Python 2.4 final?
996===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000997
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000998*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000999
1000Core and builtins
1001-----------------
1002
1003- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
1004 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
1005 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
1006
1007
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +00001008What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
1009==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001010
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +00001011*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001012
1013Core and builtins
1014-----------------
1015
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +00001016- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
1017 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
1018 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
1019
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001020
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +00001021Library
1022-------
1023
1024- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
1025 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
1026 raised is re-raised.
1027
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +00001028- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
1029 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
1030
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +00001031- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
1032 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
1033 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
1034 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
1035 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
1036 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
1037 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
1038 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
1039 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
1040 by the slice are recomputed now.
1041
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +00001042- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +00001043
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001044Build
1045-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +00001046
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +00001047- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
1048 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
1049 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001050
1051C API
1052-----
1053
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +00001054- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
1055
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001056
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001057What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
1058================================
1059
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +00001060*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001061
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001062License
1063-------
1064
1065The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
1066is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
1067changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
1068Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
1069intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
1070durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
1071the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
1072License::
1073
1074 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
1075
1076says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
1077to Python 2.1.1.
1078
1079The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
1080License Version 2.
1081
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001082Core and builtins
1083-----------------
1084
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +00001085- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
1086 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
1087 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
1088 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
1089 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
1090 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
1091 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +00001092 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +00001093 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
1094 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
1095
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +00001096- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001097
1098Extension Modules
1099-----------------
1100
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +00001101- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
1102 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
1103 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
1104 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001105
1106Library
1107-------
1108
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +00001109- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
1110 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
1111 returned.
1112
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +00001113- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
1114
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +00001115- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
1116 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
1117
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +00001118- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
1119
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +00001120- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
1121 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001122
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +00001123- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
1124
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +00001125- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
1126
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +00001127- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +00001128 the source code is updated and reloaded.
1129
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001130Build
1131-----
1132
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +00001133- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001134
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001135What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
1136================================
1137
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +00001138*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001139
1140Core and builtins
1141-----------------
1142
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001143- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +00001144 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
1145
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +00001146- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
1147 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
1148 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
1149 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
1150
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001151- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
1152 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
1153
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +00001154- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
1155 constant.
1156
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001157- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
1158 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
1159 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
1160 large), and to anomalies such as
1161 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
1162 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
1163 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
1164 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001165
1166Extension modules
1167-----------------
1168
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +00001169- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
1170 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001171 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
1172 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
1173 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001174
1175Library
1176-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001177
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001178- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001179 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001180 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
1181 --swig-cpp.
1182
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +00001183- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
1184 it is set.
1185
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +00001186- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +00001187
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +00001188- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1189 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1190 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1191 Closes bug #1039270.
1192
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001193- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001194
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001195 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001196 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1197 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1198 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1199 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1200 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1201 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1202 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1203 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1204 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1205 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1206 + Updates to documentation.
1207
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001208- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1209 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1210 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1211 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1212
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001213- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001214
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001215- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1216 applications should use the getmember function.
1217
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001218- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1219
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001220- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1221 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1222 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1223 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1224 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1225 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1226 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1227 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1228 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1229
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001230- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1231 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001232 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001233
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001234- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1235 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1236 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1237 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1238 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1239 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1240 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1241 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001242
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001243- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1244 the new public features (of which there are many).
1245
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001246- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001247 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1248 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1249 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1250 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001251 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001252
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001253- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1254
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001255- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1256 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1257 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1258 options.
1259
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001260- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1261 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1262 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1263 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1264 conditions under which non-string values work.
1265
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001266Build
1267-----
1268
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001269- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1270 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1271 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1272
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001273- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1274 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1275 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1276 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1277 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001278
1279C API
1280-----
1281
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001282- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1283 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1284
1285- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1286
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001287- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1288 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1289 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1290 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1291 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1292 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1293 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1294 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1295 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1296
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001297- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1298
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001299- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1300 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1301 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001302
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001303Tests
1304-----
1305
1306- test__locale ported to unittest
1307
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001308Mac
1309---
1310
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001311- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1312 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1313 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001314
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001315Tools/Demos
1316-----------
1317
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001318- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1319 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1320 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1321 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1322 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001323
1324
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001325What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1326=================================
1327
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001328*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001329
1330Core and builtins
1331-----------------
1332
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001333- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001334 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1335
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001336- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1337 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1338 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1339 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1340 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1341 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1342 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1343 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001344 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1345 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1346 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1347 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1348 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001349
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001350- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1351 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1352 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1353 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1354 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1355
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001356- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1357
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001358- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1359 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1360
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001361- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1362 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1363 modified the list.
1364
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001365- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1366 functions is now writable.
1367
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001368- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1369 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1370 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1371 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1372
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001373- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1374 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1375 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1376 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1377 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001378
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001379- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1380 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1381
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001382Extension modules
1383-----------------
1384
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001385- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1386
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001387- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1388 data.
1389
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001390- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1391 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1392 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1393 supposed to have been truncated away.
1394
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001395- Added socket.socketpair().
1396
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001397- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1398 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1399
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001400- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001401 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1402
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001403Library
1404-------
1405
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001406- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001407 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001408
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001409- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1410 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1411
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001412- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1413 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1414
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001415- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1416
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001417- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1418 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001419
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001420- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1421 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1422
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001423- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1424
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001425- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1426
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001427- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1428
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001429- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1430 Percivall.
1431
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001432- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1433 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1434
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001435- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1436 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1437 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001438 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001439
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001440- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1441 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1442 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1443 and exponent.
1444
1445- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1446
1447- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001448 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001449 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1450
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001451- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1452 to the readline module.
1453
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001454- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001455 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1456 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001457
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001458- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1459 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1460 contains symlinks.
1461
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001462- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1463 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1464
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001465- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1466 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1467 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1468
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001469- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1470 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1471 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1472 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1473 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1474 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1475 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1476 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1477 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1478 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1479 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1480 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1481 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1482
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001483- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1484
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001485Tools/Demos
1486-----------
1487
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001488- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1489 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1490
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001491- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1492
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001493Build
1494-----
1495
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001496- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1497 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1498 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1499 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1500 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1501 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1502 plans to do so.
1503
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001504- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1505 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1506
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001507- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1508 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1509
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001510- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1511 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1512
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001513- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1514 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1515
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001516- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1517 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1518
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001519C API
1520-----
1521
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001522..
1523
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001524Documentation
1525-------------
1526
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001527- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1528 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1529
1530- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1531 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1532 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001533
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001534New platforms
1535-------------
1536
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001537- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1538
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001539Tests
1540-----
1541
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001542..
1543
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001544Windows
1545-------
1546
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001547- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1548 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1549 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1550 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1551 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1552 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1553 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1554 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1555 the problem.
1556
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001557Mac
1558---
1559
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001560..
1561
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001562
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001563What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1564=================================
1565
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001566*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001567
1568Core and builtins
1569-----------------
1570
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001571- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1572 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1573 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1574 sensitive code.
1575
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001576- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001577 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001578
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001579 @staticmethod
1580 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001581
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001582 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001583
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001584- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1585 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1586 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1587 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1588 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1589 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1590 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1591 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1592 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1593 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1594 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1595
1596 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1597 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1598 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1599 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1600 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1601 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1602 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1603
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001604- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1605 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1606
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001607- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001608 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001609
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001610- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001611 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001612 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1613
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001614- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001615 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1616 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1617
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001618- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1619 types that support garbage collection.
1620
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001621- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1622
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001623- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1624 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1625 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1626 Jython.
1627
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001628- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1629
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001630- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1631 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1632
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001633- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1634 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1635 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001636
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001637- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1638 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1639 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1640
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001641Extension modules
1642-----------------
1643
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001644- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1645
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001646Library
1647-------
1648
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001649- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1650 TIS-620
1651
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001652- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1653 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1654 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1655 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1656 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1657 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1658 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1659 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1660 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1661 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1662
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001663- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1664
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001665- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1666 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1667 same as when the argument is omitted).
1668 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1669
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001670- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1671
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001672- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1673 schemes are offered.
1674
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001675- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1676
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001677- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1678 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1679 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1680
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001681- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1682
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001683- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1684 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1685
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001686- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1687 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1688 when dummy_threading is being used.
1689
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001690- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1691 from a tarfile.
1692
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001693- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001694 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001695
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001696- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1697 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1698 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1699 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1700
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001701- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1702 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1703
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001704- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1705 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1706 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1707 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1708 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1709 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1710 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1711 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1712 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1713 by some other method in progress).
1714
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001715- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1716 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1717 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001718
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001719- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1720
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001721- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1722 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1723 AM Kuchling.
1724
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001725- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1726 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1727 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1728
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001729- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1730 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1731 instead of unsigned.
1732
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001733- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001734 no longer part of the public API.
1735
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001736- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1737 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1738 string methods of the same name).
1739
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001740- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001741 SF patch 945642.
1742
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001743- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1744
1745 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1746
1747 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1748 DocTestSuites.
1749
1750- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1751 that provide thread-local data.
1752
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001753- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1754 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1755
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001756- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1757
1758- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1759 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1760 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1761
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001762- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1763
1764 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1765 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1766 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001767
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001768 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1769 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1770 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1771 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1772
1773 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1774 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1775
1776 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1777 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1778 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1779 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1780
1781 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1782 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1783 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1784 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1785 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1786
1787 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1788 wrapping help output.
1789
1790 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1791 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1792 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001793
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001794C API
1795-----
1796
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001797- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1798 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1799 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1800 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1801 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1802 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1803 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1804 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1805 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1806 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1807 its visible semantics have not changed.
1808
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001809- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1810 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1811
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001812Documentation
1813-------------
1814
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001815- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001816
1817 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001818 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001819
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001820 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001821
1822 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1823
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001824- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001825
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001826Tests
1827-----
1828
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001829- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001830 platforms that use the Makefile.
1831
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001832- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1833 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1834 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1835
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001836
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001837What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1838=================================
1839
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001840*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001841
1842Core and builtins
1843-----------------
1844
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001845- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1846 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1847 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1848 objects now (one object instead of three).
1849
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001850- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1851 Windows DLLs.
1852
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001853- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1854 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001855
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001856- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1857 a new .pyc magic.
1858
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001859- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1860 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1861 be there.
1862
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001863- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1864 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1865 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1866
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001867- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1868 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1869 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1870
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001871- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1872
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001873- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1874 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1875 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001876
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001877- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1878 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1879
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001880- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1881
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001882- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001883 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001884
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001885- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1886
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001887- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1888
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001889- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1890 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1891
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001892- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1893 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1894 Fixes bug #858016 .
1895
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001896- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1897 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1898 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1899
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001900- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1901 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1902 improves their performance (about 35%).
1903
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001904- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1905 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1906 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1907
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001908- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1909 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1910 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1911 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1912
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001913- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1914 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001915 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001916 length is not known).
1917
1918- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1919 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001920 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1921 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001922 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1923
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001924- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1925 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1926
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001927- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1928 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1929 keyword arguments.
1930
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001931- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1932 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1933 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1934
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001935- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1936 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1937 cases.
1938
1939- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1940 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1941 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1942 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1943 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1944 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1945 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1946 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1947 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1948 a release build.
1949
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001950- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1951 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1952
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001953- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001954 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001955
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001956- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1957 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1958 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1959 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1960 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1961 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1962 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1963 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1964 destroyed.
1965
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001966- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1967 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1968 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1969 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1970 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1971 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1972 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1973 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1974
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001975- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1976 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1977 character other than a space.
1978
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001979- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1980 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1981 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1982 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1983 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1984 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1985 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1986 attributes with the same name.
1987
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001988- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1989 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1990 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1991 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1992 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1993 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1994 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1995 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1996 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1997 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1998 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1999 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
2000 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
2001 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00002002
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00002003- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
2004 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
2005 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
2006 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
2007 This has been repaired.
2008
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00002009- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
2010
2011- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
2012
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00002013- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
2014 over a sequence.
2015
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00002016- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002017 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00002018
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00002019- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
2020
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00002021- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
2022 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
2023 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
2024 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
2025 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
2026 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
2027 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
2028 records with equal keys is unchanged).
2029
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00002030- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
2031 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
2032 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
2033
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00002034- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
2035 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
2036 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
2037 freelist.
2038
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00002039- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
2040 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
2041
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00002042- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
2043 number.
2044
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00002045- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
2046 a TypeError exception.
2047
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00002048- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
2049 820195.
2050
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00002051- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
2052 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
2053 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
2054
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002055- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00002056 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
2057 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00002058
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00002059- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
2060 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
2061 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
2062
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002063- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
2064 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002065 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002066
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002067- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00002068 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
2069 the first call.
2070
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002071
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002072Extension modules
2073-----------------
2074
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00002075- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
2076 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
2077
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002078- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
2079 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
2080 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
2081 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
2082 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
2083 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
2084 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00002085
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00002086- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
2087
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00002088- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
2089
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00002090- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
2091 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
2092
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00002093- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
2094 fewer false positives.
2095
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00002096- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
2097 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
2098
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002099- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00002100 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
2101
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00002102- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002103 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00002104 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00002105 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
2106 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00002107
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00002108- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
2109 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
2110 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
2111 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
2112
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00002113- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
2114 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
2115 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
2116 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
2117 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
2118 #897625.
2119
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00002120- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
2121 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
2122
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00002123- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
2124 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
2125 and pops on either side of the deque.
2126
2127- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
2128 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
2129
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00002130- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
2131 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
2132 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
2133 other functions that expect a function argument.
2134
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00002135- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
2136
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002137- os.getsid was added.
2138
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00002139- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
2140 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
2141 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
2142
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00002143- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
2144
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00002145- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
2146
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00002147- readline.clear_history was added.
2148
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00002149- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
2150
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00002151- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
2152
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00002153- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
2154
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00002155- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
2156
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00002157- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
2158
2159- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
2160
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00002161- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
2162
2163- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
2164
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002165- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
2166 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
2167 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
2168
2169- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
2170 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
2171 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
2172 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
2173 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
2174 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
2175 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
2176
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00002177- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
2178 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
2179 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
2180 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002181
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002182- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002183 iterators from a single iterable.
2184
2185- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
2186 of raising a TypeError exception.
2187
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00002188- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2189 as parameter.
2190
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002191Library
2192-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002193
Armin Rigoa871ef22006-02-08 12:53:56 +00002194- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
2195 profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
2196 profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
2197 Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
2198
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002199- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2200
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002201- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2202 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2203 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002204
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002205- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2206 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2207 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002208
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002209- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002210
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002211- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2212 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002213
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002214- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2215 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2216
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002217- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2218
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002219- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002220 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002221
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002222- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002223 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002224
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002225- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2226
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002227- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2228 on cygwin and mingw32.
2229
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002230- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2231
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002232- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2233 module.
2234
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002235- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2236 installation scheme for all platforms.
2237
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002238- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002239 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002240
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002241- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2242 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2243 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2244
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002245- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2246 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2247 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2248
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002249- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2250
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002251- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2252
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002253- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2254 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2255
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002256- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2257 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2258 type pattern with the same value exists.
2259
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002260- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2261 when run from the command prompt).
2262
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002263- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2264 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2265
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002266- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2267 default sort).
2268
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002269- Added global runctx function to profile module
2270
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002271- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2272
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002273- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2274
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002275- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2276
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002277- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002278 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2279 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2280 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2281 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2282 accordingly.
2283
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002284- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2285 decoding standards.
2286
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002287- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2288 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2289 called for all requests.
2290
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002291- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2292 they are passed to the compiler.
2293
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002294- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2295 indent, width and depth.
2296
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002297- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2298 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2299
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002300- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2301 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2302
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002303- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2304
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002305- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2306
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002307- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2308
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002309- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2310 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2311
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002312- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002313 for better performance.
2314
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002315- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002316
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002317- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2318 a string).
2319
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002320- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2321
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002322- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2323
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002324- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2325
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002326- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2327
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002328- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2329 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2330 list of fieldnames.
2331
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002332- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2333 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2334
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002335- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2336
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002337- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2338 empty lists.
2339
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002340- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2341 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2342 and shelves.
2343
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002344- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2345 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2346
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002347- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002348 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2349 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002350
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002351- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2352 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002353 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002354
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002355- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002356 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2357 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2358
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002359- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2360 and removed in Py2.4.
2361
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002362- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2363
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002364- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2365
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002366Tools/Demos
2367-----------
2368
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002369- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2370 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2371
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002372- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2373
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002374- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2375 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2376 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2377 destination in situations where both files are given.
2378
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002379- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2380 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2381 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2382 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2383
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002384- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2385
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002386- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2387 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2388 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2389 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2390 now.
2391
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002392- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2393 in effect
2394
2395- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2396 C-c C-h
2397
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002398- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2399 -d option was given.
2400
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002401Build
2402-----
2403
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002404- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2405 build under OS X.
2406
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002407- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2408 --enable-profiling.
2409
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002410- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2411 is configured --with-tsc.
2412
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002413- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2414 on AMD64.
2415
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002416- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2417 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2418
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002419- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2420 removed.
2421
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002422- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2423 supported (see PEP 11).
2424
2425- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2426
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002427- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2428
2429- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2430 (see PEP 11).
2431
2432- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2433 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2434
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002435C API
2436-----
2437
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002438- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2439 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2440 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2441
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002442- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2443 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2444 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2445 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2446
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002447- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2448 generator objects.
2449
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002450- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2451 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002452 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2453 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002454
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002455- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2456 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2457
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002458- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2459 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2460 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2461 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2462 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2463
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002464- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2465 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2466 about 10% faster.
2467
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002468- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2469 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2470
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002471- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2472 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2473 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2474 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2475
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002476Windows
2477-------
2478
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002479- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2480 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2481 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2482 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2483
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002484- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2485 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2486 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2487
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002488
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002489What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2490===============================
2491
2492*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2493
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002494IDLE
2495----
2496
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002497- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2498 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2499 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2500 context-menu actions.
2501
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002502- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2503 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2504 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2505 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2506 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2507 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2508 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2509 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2510 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2511
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002512
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002513What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2514=============================================
2515
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002516*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002517
2518Core and builtins
2519-----------------
2520
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002521- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002522 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002523 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2524
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002525Extension modules
2526-----------------
2527
2528- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2529 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2530 than once. This has been fixed.
2531
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002532- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2533 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2534 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2535 call.
2536
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002537- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2538
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002539Library
2540-------
2541
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002542- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2543 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2544
2545- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2546 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2547 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2548 restored.
2549
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002550IDLE
2551----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002552
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002553- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002554
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002555Build
2556-----
2557
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002558- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2559 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2560
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002561C API
2562-----
2563
2564Windows
2565-------
2566
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002567- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2568 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2569
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002570- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2571
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002572Mac
2573---
2574
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002575- Various fixes to pimp.
2576
2577- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2578
2579- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2580 more problems than it solves.
2581
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002582
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002583What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2584=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002585
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002586*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2587
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002588Core and builtins
2589-----------------
2590
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002591- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2592 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2593
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002594- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2595 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002596 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002597
2598- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2599 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2600 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002601 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002602
2603- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2604 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002605
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002606- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2607 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2608 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2609
2610- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002611 770247.
2612
2613- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002614
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002615Extension modules
2616-----------------
2617
2618- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2619 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2620
2621- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2622
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002623- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2624
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002625- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2626 contained within the _strptime module.
2627
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002628- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2629 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2630
2631- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002632 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2633
2634- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2635 the find_class attribute, if present.
2636
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002637- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002638
2639 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2640 (SF bug 763298).
2641
2642 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002643 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2644 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2645 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002646
2647 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2648
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002649Library
2650-------
2651
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002652- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2653
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002654- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2655 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2656 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2657 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2658 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2659 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2660 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2661 or Tester().
2662
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002663- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2664 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2665 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2666 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2667 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2668 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2669 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2670 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2671 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002672
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002673 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002674
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002675- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2676 weren't before was an oversight.
2677
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002678- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2679 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2680
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002681- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2682 when there are no lines.
2683
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002684- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2685 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2686
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002687- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2688 to child processes.
2689
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002690- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2691
2692- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2693
2694- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2695 xmlrpclib.
2696
2697- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2698 responses.
2699
2700- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2701 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2702
2703- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2704 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2705 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2706
2707- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2708 used as patterns.
2709
2710- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2711 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2712 than Tk 8.3.
2713
2714- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2715
2716- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002717
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002718Tools/Demos
2719-----------
2720
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002721- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2722
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002723- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2724
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002725- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002726
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002727Build
2728-----
2729
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002730- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2731
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002732- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2733
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002734- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2735 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002736
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002737- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2738 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2739 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002740
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002741C API
2742-----
2743
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002744- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2745 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2746
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002747Windows
2748-------
2749
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002750- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2751 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2752 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2753 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2754 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2755 Python exception ::
2756
2757 thread.error: can't start new thread
2758
2759 is raised now.
2760
2761- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2762 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2763 instead of from DLL teardown.
2764
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002765Mac
2766---
2767
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002768- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002769 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002770 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2771 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2772 the executable in the bundle.
2773
2774- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002775
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002776- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2777
2778- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2779 on Panther.
2780
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002781What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2782================================
2783
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002784*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002785
2786Core and builtins
2787-----------------
2788
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002789- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2790 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2791 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2792 with the -i option.
2793
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002794- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2795 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2796
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002797- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2798 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2799
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002800- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2801 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2802 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2803 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2804 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2805 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2806 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2807 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2808 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2809 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2810 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2811 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2812 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002813
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002814- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2815 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2816 embedded in a lambda expression.
2817
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002818- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2819 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2820 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2821 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2822 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2823
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002824- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2825 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2826 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2827
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002828- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2829 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2830
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002831- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2832 It's writable again.
2833
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002834- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2835 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2836 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002837 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002838
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002839- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2840 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2841 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2842
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002843Extension modules
2844-----------------
2845
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002846- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2847 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2848
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002849- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2850 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2851 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2852 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2853
2854- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2855 collection.
2856
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002857- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2858 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2859 unique within a single program run.
2860
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002861- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2862 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2863
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002864- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2865 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2866
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002867- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2868 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002869
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002870- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2871
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002872- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2873 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2874
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002875- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2876 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2877 for many BSD-derived systems.
2878
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002879
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002880Library
2881-------
2882
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002883- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2884 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2885 primary ones:
2886
2887 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2888 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2889 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2890
2891 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2892 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2893 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2894 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2895 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2896 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2897
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002898- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2899 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2900 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2901 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2902 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2903 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2904 argument.
2905
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002906- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2907 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2908 in the archive.
2909
2910- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2911 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2912
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002913- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2914 569574).
2915
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002916- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2917 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2918 no more.
2919
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002920- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2921 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2922 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2923 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2924 code coverage.
2925
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002926- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2927 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2928 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002929 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2930 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002931
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002932- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2933 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2934 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002935 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002936
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002937- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2938
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002939- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2940 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2941 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2942 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2943
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002944- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2945 handling.
2946
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002947- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2948 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2949
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002950- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2951 in socket.py.
2952
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002953- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2954
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002955- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2956 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2957 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2958 opener with proxy support.
2959
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002960- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2961
2962- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2963
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002964Tools/Demos
2965-----------
2966
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002967- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2968
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002969- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2970
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002971- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2972 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002973
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002974- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2975 files.
2976
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002977Build
2978-----
2979
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002980- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002981 different root directory.
2982
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002983C API
2984-----
2985
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002986- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2987 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2988 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2989 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2990 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2991 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2992 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2993 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2994 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2995 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2996
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002997- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2998 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2999 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
3000 from Python.
3001
3002
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00003003New platforms
3004-------------
3005
3006None this time.
3007
3008Tests
3009-----
3010
3011- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
3012 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
3013
3014Windows
3015-------
3016
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00003017- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
3018
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00003019- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
3020 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
3021 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
3022 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
3023 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
3024 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
3025 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
3026 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
3027 that's what it's for.
3028
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00003029Mac
3030---
3031
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00003032- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
3033 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
3034 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
3035 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00003036- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
3037 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
3038- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00003039
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00003040SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
3041------------------------------------
3042
3043430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
3044598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
3045622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
3046661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
3047683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
3048697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
3049713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
3050724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
3051727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
3052729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
3053730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
3054731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
3055732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
3056733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
3057735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
3058740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
3059744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
3060745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
3061747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
3062749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
3063751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
3064753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
3065755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
3066757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
3067760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
3068
3069
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003070What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
3071================================
3072
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00003073*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003074
3075Core and builtins
3076-----------------
3077
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00003078- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
3079 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
3080
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00003081- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
3082 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
3083 and cannot be strings).
3084
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00003085- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
3086 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
3087 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
3088 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
3089
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00003090- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
3091 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
3092 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
3093 Python itself.
3094
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00003095- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
3096 the referenced object, if it has one.
3097
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00003098- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
3099 the thread started at
3100 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
3101
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00003102- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
3103 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
3104 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
3105 placed on a list index.
3106
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00003107- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
3108 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
3109 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
3110 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
3111
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003112- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
3113 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
3114 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
3115 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
3116 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
3117 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
3118 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
3119
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00003120- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
3121 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
3122 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
3123 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
3124 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
3125
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00003126- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
3127 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00003128
3129- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
3130 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
3131 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
3132 #693195.)
3133
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00003134- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
3135 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003136
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003137- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00003138 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003139 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
3140 interpreter executions, would fail.
3141
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003142- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00003143 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00003144 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003145
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003146Extension modules
3147-----------------
3148
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00003149- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
3150 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
3151 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
3152 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
3153
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00003154- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
3155 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
3156
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00003157- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
3158 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
3159 and Greg Chapman.)
3160
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003161- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
3162 recursively.
3163
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00003164- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00003165 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
3166 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
3167 leaks.
3168
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00003169- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
3170
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00003171- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
3172 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
3173 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
3174 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
3175 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
3176 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
3177 #705836.
3178
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00003179- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00003180 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
3181
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00003182- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
3183 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
3184 See SF bug #692416.
3185
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00003186- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
3187 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
3188
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00003189- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
3190 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
3191 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003192
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003193- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003194 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3195 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3196
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003197- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3198 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3199 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3200 timeouts to work properly.
3201
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003202Library
3203-------
3204
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003205- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3206 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3207 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3208 future release.
3209
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003210- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3211 for querying platform dependent features.
3212
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003213- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003214
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003215- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3216 pickle protocol versions.
3217
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003218- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3219 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3220 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3221
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003222- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3223
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003224- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3225 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3226 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3227 modules.
3228
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003229- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3230 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3231 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3232
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003233- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3234 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3235
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003236- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3237 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3238 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3239
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003240- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003241 MS Office extensions.
3242
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003243- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3244 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3245
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003246- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3247 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3248
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003249- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3250 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3251 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3252 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3253 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3254 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3255
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003256- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3257 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3258 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003259
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003260- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3261 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3262 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3263
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003264- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3265
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003266- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3267 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3268 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3269
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003270Tools/Demos
3271-----------
3272
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003273- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3274 See the module docstring for details.
3275
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003276Build
3277-----
3278
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003279- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3280 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003281
3282C API
3283-----
3284
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003285- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3286
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003287- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3288 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3289 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3290
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003291- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3292 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003293
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003294 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3295 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3296 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003297
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003298- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003299 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3300
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003301- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3302 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3303 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003304
3305New platforms
3306-------------
3307
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003308None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003309
3310Tests
3311-----
3312
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003313- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3314 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003315
3316Windows
3317-------
3318
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003319- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3320 function.
3321
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003322- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3323 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003324
3325Mac
3326---
3327
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003328- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3329 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003330
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003331- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3332 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003333
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003334- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3335 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3336 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003337
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003338- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003339 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3340 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003341
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003342- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3343 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003344
3345
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003346What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3347=================================
3348
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003349*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003350
3351Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003352-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003353
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003354- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3355 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3356 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3357
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003358- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3359 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3360 (SF patch #664376.)
3361
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003362- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3363 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3364 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3365 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3366 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3367 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003368 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003369
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003370- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3371 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3372 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3373 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003374 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003375
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003376- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3377 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3378 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3379 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3380 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3381 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3382 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3383 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3384 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3385 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3386 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3387
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003388- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3389 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3390 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3391 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3392 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3393 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3394
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003395- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3396 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3397
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003398- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3399 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3400 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3401 case.)
3402
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003403- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3404 passed as unicode strings.
3405
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003406- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3407 See SF bug #683467.
3408
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003409- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3410 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3411
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003412- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3413
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003414- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3415
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003416- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3417 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3418 arguments.
3419
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003420- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3421 See SF bug #667147.
3422
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003423- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003424 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003425 See SF bug #676155.
3426
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003427- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003428 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003429 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3430 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3431 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3432 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3433 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3434 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003435
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003436Extension modules
3437-----------------
3438
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003439- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3440 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3441 tp_as_number pointer.
3442
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003443- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3444 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3445 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3446 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3447 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3448
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003449- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3450
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003451- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3452
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003453- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003454 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003455 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3456 patch #678531.)
3457
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003458- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3459 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3460
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003461- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3462 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3463
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003464- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3465
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003466- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3467 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3468 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3469
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003470- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3471
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003472- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3473 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3474
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003475- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003476
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003477- datetime changes:
3478
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003479 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3480
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003481 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3482 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3483 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3484 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3485 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3486 now.
3487
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003488 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003489 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3490 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003491
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003492 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003493 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003494 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3495 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3496 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3497 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003498
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003499 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3500 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3501 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003502 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3503
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003504 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3505 by a later example coded by Guido.
3506
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003507 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003508 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3509 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3510 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003511 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3512 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3513
3514 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3515 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3516 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3517 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3518 tzinfo subclass instance.
3519
3520 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3521 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3522 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3523 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3524 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3525 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3526 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3527 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003528
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003529 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3530 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3531 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3532 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3533 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003534 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3535
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003536 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003537
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003538 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3539 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3540 as a naive datetime object.
3541
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003542 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3543 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3544 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3545
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003546 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3547 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3548 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3549 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3550 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3551 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3552 comparison.
3553
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003554 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3555 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3556 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3557 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003558 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003559
3560 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003561
3562 and ::
3563
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003564 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3565
3566 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3567 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3568 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3569 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3570
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003571 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3572 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3573 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3574 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3575 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3576
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003577 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3578 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003579 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3580 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003581
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003582Library
3583-------
3584
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003585- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3586 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3587
3588- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3589 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3590 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3591 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3592 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3593 See PEP 307 for details.
3594
3595- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3596 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3597
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003598- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3599 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003600 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003601 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3602 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003603 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003604
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003605- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3606 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3607
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003608- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3609 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3610 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3611
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003612- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3613
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003614- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3615 exception.
3616
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003617- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3618 class.
3619
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003620- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3621 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3622 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3623
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003624- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3625 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3626
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003627- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003628 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3629 See SF bug #659228.
3630
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003631- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3632 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3633 See SF patch #651082.
3634
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003635- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003636
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003637- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3638 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3639
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003640- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003641 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003642
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003643- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3644 DOS paths from other platforms.
3645
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003646Tools/Demos
3647-----------
3648
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003649- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3650 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3651 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3652 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3653 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3654 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3655 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3656 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3657 example:
3658
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003659 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3660 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003661
3662 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3663
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003664
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003665Build
3666-----
3667
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003668- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3669 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3670 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003671 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3672
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003673 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3674
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003675- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3676 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3677 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3678 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3679 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3680 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3681 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3682 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3683 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3684
3685- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3686 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3687 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3688 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3689
3690- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3691 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3692
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003693C API
3694-----
3695
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003696- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3697 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003698
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003699- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3700 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3701 tp_as_number pointer.
3702
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003703- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3704 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3705 (SF #681367)
3706
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003707- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3708 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3709 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3710 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003711
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003712Tests
3713-----
3714
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003715- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003716 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3717 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3718 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3719 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3720 pydoc.)
3721
3722- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3723
3724- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003725
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003726Windows
3727-------
3728
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003729- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3730 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3731 time).
3732
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003733- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3734 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3735
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003736- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3737 release without strong cryptography.
3738
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003739- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003740 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003741
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003742- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3743 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3744
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003745Mac
3746---
3747
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003748- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3749 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003750
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003751- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3752 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3753 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003754
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003755- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3756 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003757
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003758- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3759 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3760 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3761 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003762
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003763- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003764 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3765 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3766 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003767
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003768
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003769What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003770=================================
3771
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003772*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003773
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003774Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003775--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003776
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003777- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3778
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003779- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3780 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003781 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003782 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003783 a different meaning than before.
3784
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003785- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003786 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003787 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003788
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003789- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003790 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003791 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003792
3793- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3794 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3795 and deallocation.
3796
3797- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3798 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3799
3800- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3801 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3802 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3803 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3804 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3805
3806- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3807 now detected by the garbage collector.
3808
3809- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3810 [SF bug 519621]
3811
3812- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3813 identifier.
3814
3815- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3816 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3817 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3818 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3819 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3820 [SF bug 563060]
3821
3822- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3823 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3824 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3825 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3826 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3827
3828- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3829 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3830 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3831
3832- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3833
3834- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3835 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3836 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3837 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3838 state of the slots would be lost.)
3839
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003840Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003841-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003842
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003843- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003844 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3845 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3846 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3847 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003848 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3849 Jython 2.1.
3850
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003851- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003852 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003853 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3854 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3855 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3856 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3857 these, see PEP 302.
3858
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003859- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3860 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3861 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3862
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003863- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3864 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3865 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3866
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003867- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3868 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3869 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3870
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003871- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3872 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3873 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3874 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3875 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3876 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3877 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3878 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3879 releases or implementations.
3880
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003881- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003882 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3883 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003884
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003885- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3886 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3887
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003888- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3889 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3890 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3891
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003892- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3893 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3894
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003895- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3896 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003897 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3898 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003899
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003900- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3901 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3902 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3903 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3904 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3905
3906 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3907 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3908 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3909 pattern.
3910
3911 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3912 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3913 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3914 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3915
3916 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3917 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3918 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3919 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3920 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3921 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3922
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003923- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3924 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3925 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3926 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3927 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3928 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3929 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3930 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003931
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003932- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3933 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3934 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3935 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3936 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003937 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3938 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3939 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3940 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3941 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3942 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3943 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003944
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003945- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3946 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3947
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003948- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3949 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3950 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3951 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3952 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3953 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3954 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3955 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3956 to Zack Weinberg!
3957
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003958- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3959 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3960 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3961 type. This has been fixed now.
3962
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003963- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3964 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3965 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3966
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003967- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3968 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3969 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3970 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3971 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3972 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3973 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3974 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003975 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003976
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003977- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3978 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3979 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003980
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003981- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3982 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3983 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3984 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3985 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3986 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3987 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3988 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003989 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003990 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3991 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3992
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003993- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3994 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3995 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3996 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3997 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3998 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3999 this.)
4000
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00004001- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
4002 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004003 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00004004 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00004005 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
4006 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00004007 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
4008 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00004009
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00004010- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
4011 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
4012 currently running.
4013
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00004014- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
4015 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
4016 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
4017 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
4018
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00004019- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
4020 as directory names.
4021
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00004022- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
4023 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
4024
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00004025- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
4026 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
4027
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00004028- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00004029 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
4030 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00004031
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00004032- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
4033 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
4034 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
4035 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
4036 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
4037
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004038- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
4039 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
4040 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
4041 removed.
4042
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00004043- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
4044 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
4045 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
4046
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00004047- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
4048 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
4049 to __debug__.
4050
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00004051- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
4052 string to the left with zeros. For example,
4053 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
4054
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00004055- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
4056 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
4057 deprecated now.
4058
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00004059- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
4060 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
4061 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00004062
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00004063- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
4064 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
4065 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
4066 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
4067 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00004068
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00004069- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
4070 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
4071
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00004072- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
4073 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
4074 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004075 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00004076 is backward compatible.
4077
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00004078- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
4079 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
4080 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
4081 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
4082 could access a pointer to freed memory.
4083
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00004084- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
4085 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
4086 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
4087 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
4088 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
4089 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004090
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00004091- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
4092 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
4093
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004094- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
4095 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
4096
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004097- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
4098 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
4099 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
4100 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
4101 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
4102
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00004103- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
4104 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
4105 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
4106
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004107- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00004108 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
4109
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00004110- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
4111 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
4112 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00004113
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00004114- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
4115 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
4116
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00004117- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
4118 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
4119 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
4120
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00004121- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
4122
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004123Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004124-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004125
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00004126- Added three operators to the operator module:
4127 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
4128 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
4129 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
4130
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00004131- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
4132
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00004133- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
4134 archives.
4135
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004136- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
4137 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
4138 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
4139
4140 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
4141
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004142- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
4143 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
4144 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00004145 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004146
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00004147- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
4148 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
4149 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
4150 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00004151 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
4152 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
4153 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
4154 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00004155
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00004156- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
4157 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00004158
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00004159- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
4160
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00004161- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
4162 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
4163
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00004164- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
4165 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
4166 supported.
4167
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00004168- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
4169
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00004170- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
4171 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00004172
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00004173- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
4174 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
4175
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00004176- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
4177
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004178- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
4179 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
4180
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00004181- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
4182 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
4183 functions but callable type objects.
4184
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004185- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004186 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004187 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004188
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00004189- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
4190 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00004191
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00004192- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
4193 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004194
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004195- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4196 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4197 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4198 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4199
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004200- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4201 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004202
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004203- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4204 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4205 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4206 and __imul__.
4207
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004208- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004209 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4210 is called.
4211
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004212- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4213 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4214 interpreter was compiled.
4215
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004216- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4217 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4218 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004219 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004220 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4221 1, not 2.
4222
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004223- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4224 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4225 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4226 limit.
4227
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004228- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4229 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4230 bug #623464.
4231
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004232- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4233 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4234 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4235 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4236
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004237Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004238-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004239
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004240- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4241
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004242- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4243 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4244 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4245 with Python 2.3a2.
4246
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004247- os.path exposes getctime.
4248
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004249- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004250 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004251 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004252 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004253 unit tests of floating point results.
4254
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004255- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4256 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4257 has been increased.
4258
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004259- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4260 executed.
4261
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004262- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4263 postinstallation script.
4264
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004265- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4266 test the current module.
4267
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004268- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004269 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4270 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4271 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4272 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4273
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004274- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004275 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004276 Ward's Optik package.
4277
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004278- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4279 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4280 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4281 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4282
4283- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4284 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004285 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004286
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004287- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4288 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4289 shelf are binary pickles.
4290
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004291- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4292 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4293
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004294- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4295 modules are iterators now.
4296
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004297- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4298 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4299 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4300 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4301 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4302 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004303
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004304- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4305 with their entity value.
4306
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004307- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4308
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004309- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4310 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004311
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004312- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4313 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004314 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004315
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004316- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4317 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4318 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4319 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4320 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4321 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4322 main():
4323
4324 import locale
4325 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4326
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004327- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4328 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4329
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004330- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4331 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4332 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4333 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4334 to the new standard.
4335
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004336- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4337 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4338 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4339 an extension to the database.
4340
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004341- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4342 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4343 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4344 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004345 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004346
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004347- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004348 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004349
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004350- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4351 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4352 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4353 bounded integers.
4354
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004355- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4356 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4357 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4358 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4359 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4360 in existence.
4361
4362 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4363 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4364 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4365 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4366 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4367 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4368
4369 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4370 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4371 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4372 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4373
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004374- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4375 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4376 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4377
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004378- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4379
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004380- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4381 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4382 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4383 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4384
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004385- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4386 argument.
4387
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004388- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4389 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4390 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4391 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4392 [SF patch 560794].
4393
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004394- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4395 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4396 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004397 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4398 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4399 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004400
4401- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4402 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004403
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004404- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4405 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4406 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4407 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004408
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004409- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4410 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4411 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4412 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4413 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4414
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004415- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004416
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004417- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4418
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004419- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4420 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4421 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4422 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4423 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4424 identical to None.
4425
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004426- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4427 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4428 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4429 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4430 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4431 results now.
4432
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004433- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4434 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4435
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004436- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4437 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4438 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4439 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4440 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4441 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4442 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4443 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4444
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004445- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4446
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004447- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4448 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4449
4450- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4451 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4452 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4453 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4454 and other systems.
4455
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004456- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4457 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4458 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4459 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 +00004460 work well with these.
4461
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004462- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4463
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004464- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004465 connections.
4466
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004467- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4468 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4469 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4470
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004471- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4472 sets
4473
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004474- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4475 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4476 name.
4477
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004478- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4479 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4480 passed in.
4481
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004482- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004483 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004484 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4485 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004486
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004487- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4488
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004489- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4490
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004491- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4492 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4493 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4494
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004495- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4496 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4497 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4498 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004499 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004500
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004501- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004502 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004503 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004504
4505- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4506 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4507 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4508
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004509- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004510 the value of its expression argument.
4511
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004512- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4513 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4514 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4515
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004516- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4517 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4518 skipstone browser was included.
4519
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004520- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4521 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4522
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004523Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004524-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004525
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004526- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4527 names in addition to accepting file names.
4528
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004529- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4530 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4531 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4532 still used and useful.)
4533
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004534- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4535 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4536 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4537 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004538
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004539- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4540 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4541 the generated binary.
4542
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004543Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004544-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004545
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004546- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4547
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004548- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4549 except in the hands of experts.
4550
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004551- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004552 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4553 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4554 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004555
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004556- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4557 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4558 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4559 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4560 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4561 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4562 builds.
4563
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004564- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4565 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4566 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4567 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4568 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4569 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4570 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4571 new type.
4572
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004573- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004574
4575 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4576 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4577 positive infinities.
4578
4579 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4580 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4581 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4582 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4583 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4584 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4585 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4586
4587 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4588
4589 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4590
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004591- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4592 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4593 size of the executable.
4594
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004595- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4596 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4597 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4598 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004599
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004600- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4601
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004602- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4603 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4604 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004605
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004606- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4607 well as Unix.
4608
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004609- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4610 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4611 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4612 modules in the README file for details.
4613
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004614C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004615-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004616
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004617- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4618 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004619 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004620 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004621 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004622
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004623- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4624 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4625 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4626 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4627 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4628 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004629 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004630 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4631 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4632 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4633 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4634 aligned.)
4635
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004636- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4637 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4638 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4639
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004640- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4641 level.
4642
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004643- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4644 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4645 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4646 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4647 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4648
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004649- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4650 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4651 code.
4652
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004653- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4654 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4655 adjusting for negative indices.
4656
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004657- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4658 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4659 object.
4660
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004661- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4662 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4663 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4664
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004665- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4666 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004667
4668- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4669
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004670- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4671 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4672 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4673 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4674
4675- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4676
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004677- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004678
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004679- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004680 without going through the buffer API.
4681
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004682- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004683
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004684- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4685 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4686 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4687 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4688
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004689- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4690 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4691
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004692- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004693 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4694
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004695New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004696-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004697
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004698- OpenVMS is now supported.
4699
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004700- AtheOS is now supported.
4701
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004702- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4703
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004704- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4705
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004706Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004707-----
4708
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004709- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4710 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4711 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004712
4713Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004714-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004715
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004716- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4717 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4718 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4719 bugs.
4720 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004721 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004722 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4723 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004724 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004725
4726- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004727 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004728
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004729- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4730 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4731
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004732- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4733 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004734 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004735 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4736
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004737- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4738 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4739 use files" uninstall option).
4740
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004741- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4742
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004743- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4744 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4745
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004746- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4747 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4748 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4749
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004750- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4751 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4752 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4753 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4754 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004755 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4756 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4757 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004758
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004759- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004760 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004761 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4762 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4763 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4764 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4765 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4766 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4767 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4768 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4769 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4770 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4771 work around.
4772
4773- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4774 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4775 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4776 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4777 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4778 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4779 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4780 specified with O_CREAT too).
4781
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004782Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004783----
4784
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004785- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004786
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004787- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4788 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4789 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4790
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004791- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4792 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4793 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4794
4795- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4796 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4797 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4798 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4799 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4800 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4801 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4802 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004803
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004804- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4805 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4806 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004807
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004808- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4809 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4810 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4811 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4812 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004813
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004814- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4815 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4816 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004817
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004818- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4819 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004820
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004821- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4822 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4823 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4824 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4825 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004826
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004827- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4828 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4829 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4830
4831- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4832 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4833 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004834
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004835- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4836 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4837 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4838 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004839 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004840
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004841- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4842 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004843
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004844- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4845 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004846
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004847- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004848 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004849 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4850 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004851
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004852
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004853What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004854===============================
4855
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004856*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4857
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004858Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004859--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004860
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004861- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4862 with a custom metaclass.
4863
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004864Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004865-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004866
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004867- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4868 are proxies.
4869
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004870Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004871-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004872
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004873- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4874 very short strings.
4875
4876- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4877 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4878 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4879 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4880 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4881
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004882Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004883-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004884
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004885- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4886 close or delete time).
4887
4888- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4889 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4890
4891- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4892
4893- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004894 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004895
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004896Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004897-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004898
4899Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004900-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004901
4902C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004903-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004904
4905New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004906-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004907
4908Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004909-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004910
4911Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004912-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004913
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004914- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4915
4916- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4917 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4918
4919- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4920 deleted at process exit time.
4921
4922- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4923 in backslash.
4924
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004925Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004926----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004927
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004928- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4929 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4930 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4931
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004932
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004933What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004934===========================
4935
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004936*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4937
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004938Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004939--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004940
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004941- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4942 been extensively updated. See
4943
4944 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4945
4946 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4947
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004948- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4949 deleted!
4950
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004951- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4952 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4953 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4954 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4955 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4956
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004957- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4958
4959 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4960 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4961
4962 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4963 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4964 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4965 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4966 supported anyway.
4967
4968 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4969 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4970
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004971- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4972 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4973 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4974 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4975 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004976
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004977- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4978 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4979 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4980
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004981Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004982-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004983
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004984- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4985 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4986 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4987 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4988 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4989 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004990 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4991 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4992 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4993 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004994
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004995- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4996 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4997 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4998
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004999Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005000-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005001
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005002- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
5003
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005004Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005005-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005006
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00005007- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
5008 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
5009 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
5010 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
5011 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
5012 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
5013
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00005014- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
5015
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00005016- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
5017
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00005018- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
5019
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005020- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
5021 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
5022 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
5023
5024- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
5025
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005026Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005027-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005028
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005029- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
5030 off a search on Google.
5031
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005032Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005033-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005034
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005035- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
5036 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
5037 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
5038 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
5039 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
5040 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
5041 other platforms should do likewise.
5042
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00005043- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
5044 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
5045 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
5046
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005047C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005048-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005049
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00005050- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
5051 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
5052 producing key-value pairs.
5053
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00005054- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00005055 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00005056 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
5057 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
5058 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
5059 previously went unchallenged.
5060
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005061New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005062-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005063
5064Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005065-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005066
5067Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005068-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005069
5070Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005071----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005072
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00005073- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
5074 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005075
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005076- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
5077 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
5078 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
5079 home.
5080
5081
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005082What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005083===========================
5084
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005085*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
5086
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005087Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005088--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005089
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00005090- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
5091 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005092
5093 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00005094 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005095
5096 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
5097 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005098 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005099 This needs to be documented.
5100
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00005101- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
5102 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
5103
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00005104- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
5105 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
5106 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
5107
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00005108- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
5109 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
5110
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005111- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
5112 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
5113 class forbids it).
5114
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00005115- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
5116 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
5117 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
5118
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005119- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
5120
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005121Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005122-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005123
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00005124- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
5125 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005126 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00005127
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005128- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
5129 (like 1 + '').
5130
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005131Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005132-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005133
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005134- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
5135 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
5136 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
5137 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005138 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005139 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
5140
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00005141- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
5142 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
5143 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
5144 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
5145
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005146- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
5147 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005148 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
5149 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
5150 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005151
5152- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
5153 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005154
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00005155- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
5156 bytes on its input.
5157
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005158Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005159-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005160
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005161- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00005162 convenience function.
5163
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005164- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
5165 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
5166 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005167 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
5168 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
5169 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
5170 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
5171 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
5172 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005173
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00005174- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
5175 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
5176 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
5177 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
5178
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00005179- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
5180 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
5181 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
5182
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005183- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
5184 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
5185 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
5186 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
5187
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005188- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
5189 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005190 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005191 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
5192 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
5193 new -l and -e options.
5194
5195- statcache is now deprecated.
5196
5197- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5198 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005199 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005200 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5201 time properly taken into account.
5202
5203- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5204 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5205 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5206 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5207
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005208Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005209-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005210
5211Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005212-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005213
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005214- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5215 is built with libdb3 if available.
5216
5217- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5218
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005219C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005220-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005221
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005222- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5223 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5224 PySequence_Size().
5225
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005226- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5227
5228- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5229 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5230 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5231
5232- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5233 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5234
5235- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5236 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5237
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005238New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005239-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005240
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005241- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5242 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5243
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005244- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5245 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5246
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005247- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5248
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005249Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005250-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005251
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005252- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5253 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5254
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005255Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005256-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005257
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005258Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005259----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005260
5261- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5262 removed completely in the next release.
5263
5264- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5265 OSX.
5266
5267- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5268 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5269
5270- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5271
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005272
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005273What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005274===========================
5275
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005276*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5277
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005278Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005279--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005280
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005281- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005282 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005283 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005284 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5285 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005286 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5287 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005288 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5289 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005290
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005291- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5292 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5293
5294- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5295 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5296
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005297Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005298-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005299
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005300- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5301 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5302 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5303 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5304 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5305 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5306 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5307 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5308
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005309- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5310 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5311 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5312 example).
5313
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005314- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005315 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005316 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005317 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005318
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005319- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5320 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5321 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005322 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005323
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005324- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5325 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5326 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5327 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5328 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5329 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5330
5331 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5332
5333 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5334
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005335Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005336-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005337
5338- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5339
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005340- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5341
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005342- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5343 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005344
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005345- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5346 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5347 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5348 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5349 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5350 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005351 attributes.
5352
5353- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5354 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5355 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005356
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005357- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5358 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5359 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005360
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005361- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5362 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5363 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005364 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5365 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5366
5367- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5368 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005369
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005370Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005371-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005372
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005373- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5374 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5375
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005376- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5377 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5378 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5379 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5380
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005381- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5382 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5383 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5384 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5385
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005386 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5387 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5388 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5389 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5390 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5391 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5392 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5393 without losing information).
5394
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005395- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005396 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5397 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5398 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5399 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5400 module).
5401
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005402 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005403 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5404 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5405 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5406 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005407
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005408- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005409 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5410 encoding.
5411
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005412- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5413 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5414
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005415- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005416 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5417
5418- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5419 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5420 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5421 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5422
5423- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5424
5425- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5426 ON, and OFF.
5427
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005428- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5429 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5430
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005431Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005432-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005433
5434- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5435 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5436 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005437
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005438- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5439 been added: -X and -E.
5440
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005441Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005442-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005443
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005444- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5445 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5446
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005447C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005448-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005449
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005450- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5451 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5452 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5453 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5454 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5455
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005456- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5457 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5458 as long) arguments.
5459
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005460- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5461 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5462 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5463 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5464 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5465 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5466
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005467- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5468 input.
5469
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005470New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005471-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005472
5473Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005474-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005475
5476Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005477-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005478
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005479- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5480 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5481 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5482
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005483- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5484 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5485 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005486 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005487
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005488 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5489 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5490 import signal
5491 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005492
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005493 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005494 while 1:
5495 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005496 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005497 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5498 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5499 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5500 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005501
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005502
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005503What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5504===========================
5505
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005506*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5507
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005508Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005509--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005510
5511- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5512 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5513 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5514
5515- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5516 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5517 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5518 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5519 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5520 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5521 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005522
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005523- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005524 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005525 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5526 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5527 associate a docstring with a property.
5528
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005529- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5530 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5531 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5532 other built-in object types.
5533
5534- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5535 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5536 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5537 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5538 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5539
5540- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5541 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5542
5543- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5544 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005545 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005546 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5547 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5548 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5549 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5550 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5551
5552- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5553 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5554 class.
5555
5556- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5557 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5558 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5559 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5560
5561- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5562 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5563 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5564 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5565
5566- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5567 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5568
5569- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5570 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5571 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5572 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5573 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005574 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005575 with the same value as s.
5576
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005577- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5578
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005579Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005580----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005581
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005582- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5583
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005584- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5585 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5586 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5587 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5588 objects.
5589
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005590- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5591 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005592 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5593 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5594
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005595- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5596 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5597 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5598
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005599Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005600-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005601
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005602- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5603 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5604 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5605 by the instances.
5606
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005607- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5608 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5609 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5610
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005611- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5612 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5613 before the entire comparison is complete.
5614
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005615- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5616 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5617 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5618
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005619- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5620 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5621 getwriter().
5622
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005623- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5624 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5625
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005626- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005627 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5628 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5629
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005630- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5631 iterable object.
5632
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005633- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5634 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005635
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005636- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5637 authentication.
5638
5639- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5640 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005641
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005642- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005643 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5644 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5645 a sample driver.)
5646
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005647Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005648-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005649
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005650- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5651 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5652 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5653 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5654 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5655 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5656 kernel has large file support.
5657
5658- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5659 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5660 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5661 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5662 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5663
5664- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5665 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5666 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5667
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005668C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005669-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005670
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005671- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5672 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5673
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005674New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005675-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005676
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005677- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5678 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5679
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005680Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005681-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005682
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005683- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5684 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5685 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5686 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5687 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5688
5689- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5690 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5691 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5692 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5693
5694- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5695 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5696
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005697Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005698-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005699
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005700- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005701 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5702 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005703
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005704
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005705What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5706===========================
5707
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005708*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5709
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005710Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005711----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005712
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005713- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5714 big to represent as a C double.
5715
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005716- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5717 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5718 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5719 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5720 restriction).
5721
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005722- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5723 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5724 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5725 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5726 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5727
5728 >>> dir([])
5729 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5730 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5731 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5732 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5733 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5734 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5735 'reverse', 'sort']
5736
5737 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5738
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005739- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005740 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5741 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5742 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5743 OverflowError exception.
5744
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005745- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005746 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005747 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5748 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5749 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5750 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5751 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005752 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005753 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5754 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5755
5756 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5757 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5758 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5759 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005760
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005761- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005762 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5763 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5764 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5765 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5766 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5767 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5768 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5769 once it is created.
5770
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005771- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5772 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5773 (key, value) pairs.
5774
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005775- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005776 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5777 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5778
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005779- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5780 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5781 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5782 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5783 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005784
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005785- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005786 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5787 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5788
5789 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5790
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005791- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005792 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5793
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005794Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005795-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005796
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005797- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005798 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5799 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005800
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005801- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5802 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5803 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5804 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5805 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5806 in this area anymore).
5807
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005808- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5809 threading.Timer.
5810
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005811- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5812 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5813
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005814- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005815 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5816
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005817- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005818 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5819 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5820 converted to Python longs.
5821
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005822- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005823 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5824
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005825- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5826 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5827 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5828
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005829Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005830-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005831
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005832- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5833 division operators as per PEP 238.
5834
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005835Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005836-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005837
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005838- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5839 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5840 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5841 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5842
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005843C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005844-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005845
5846- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005847
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005848- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5849 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005850 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005851
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005852 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5853 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005854 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005855 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005856
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005857- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005858 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5859 module:
5860
5861 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005862
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005863 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5864 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005865
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005866 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5867 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005868
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005869 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5870
5871 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5872
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005873- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005874 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5875 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5876 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005877
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005878New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005879-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005880
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005881- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5882 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5883 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5884 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5885 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005886
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005887Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005888-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005889
5890Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005891-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005892
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005893- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5894 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5895 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5896 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005897 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5898 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5899 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5900 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5901 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005902
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005903- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005904 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5905
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005906
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005907What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5908===========================
5909
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005910*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5911
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005912Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005913-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005914
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005915- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5916 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5917
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005918- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5919 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5920 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005921
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005922- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5923 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5924 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5925 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005926
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005927- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5928
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005929- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005930
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005931Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005932-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005933
5934- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005935 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005936 the module docstring for details.
5937
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005938Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005939-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005940
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005941- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005942 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5943 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5944 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005945
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005946- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5947 Nick Mathewson.
5948
5949Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005950----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005951
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005952- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5953 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5954 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5955 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5956 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5957 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5958 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5959 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5960
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005961- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5962 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5963 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5964 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5965
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005966- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5967 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5968 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5969 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5970 come a long way).
5971
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005972- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5973 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5974 write filters for these warnings).
5975
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005976- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5977 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5978 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5979 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5980 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5981
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005982- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5983 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5984 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5985 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5986 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5987 older distribution.
5988
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005989Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005990-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005991
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005992- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5993 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005994 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005995
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005996- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5997 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5998 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5999
6000- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
6001
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00006002- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
6003
6004- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
6005
6006- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
6007
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006008- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00006009
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00006010- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
6011
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006012New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006013-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006014
6015C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006016-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006017
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00006018- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
6019 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
6020 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
6021 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
6022 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
6023 against buffer overruns.
6024
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00006025- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00006026 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
6027 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00006028 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
6029 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
6030 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
6031
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00006032- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
6033 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
6034 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
6035 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
6036 deprecated.
6037
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00006038Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006039-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00006040
6041- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
6042 relevant is found.
6043
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00006044
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006045What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006046===========================
6047
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006048*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
6049
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006050Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006051----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006052
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00006053- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
6054 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
6055 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
6056 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
6057 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
6058 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
6059 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
6060 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006061 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00006062 repaired.
6063
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006064- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00006065 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006066 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
6067 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
6068 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
6069 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
6070 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
6071 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
6072 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
6073 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
6074
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00006075- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
6076 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
6077 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
6078 leading BMO character).
6079
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006080- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
6081 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
6082 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
6083
6084 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
6085 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
6086 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006087
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006088 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
6089 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
6090 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
6091 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
6092 for various simple to use conversions.
6093
6094 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
6095 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
6096
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006097 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6098 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
6099 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
6100 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
6101 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6102 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
6103 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6104 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
6105 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6106 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
6107 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6108 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
6109 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6110 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
6111 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006112
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006113- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
6114 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
6115 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006116 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006117 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006118
6119 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006120 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
6121 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
6122 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
6123 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
6124 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006125 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
6126 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006127
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006128 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
6129 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
6130 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006131 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006132
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00006133- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
6134 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
6135 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
6136 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
6137 floating arithmetic,
6138
6139 x = 9007199254740992.0
6140 print long(x)
6141
6142 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
6143 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
6144 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
6145 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
6146 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
6147 functions are of good quality).
6148
6149 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
6150 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
6151 algorithms to break.
6152
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00006153- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
6154 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
6155 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
6156 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
6157 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
6158 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
6159 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
6160 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
6161 order.
6162
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006163- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
6164 operation along the most common code paths.
6165
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006166- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
6167 the same as dict.has_key(x).
6168
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00006169- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
6170 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
6171 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
6172 {}.update(UserDict())
6173
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006174- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
6175 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
6176 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
6177 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
6178 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
6179 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
6180 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
6181 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
6182
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006183- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00006184 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006185
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006186 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00006187 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
6188 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00006189 join() method of strings
6190 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006191 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
6192 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006193 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006194 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006195
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006196- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6197 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6198
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006199- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6200 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6201
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006202- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6203 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6204 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6205 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6206
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006207- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6208 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006209 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006210 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6211 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006212
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006213- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6214
6215
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006216Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006217-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006218
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006219- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006220 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006221 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6222 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6223
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006224- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6225 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6226
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006227- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6228 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6229 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6230 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6231
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006232- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6233 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6234 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6235
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006236- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6237
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006238- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6239
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006240- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6241 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6242 that are still imported into string.py).
6243
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006244- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6245
6246- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6247 Now it does.
6248
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006249- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6250
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006251- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6252 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6253 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6254 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6255 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006256 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6257 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006258
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006259- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6260 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6261 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6262 'help(object)'.
6263
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006264Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006265-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006266
6267- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006268 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006269 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6270 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6271
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006272- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006273 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6274 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006275
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006276C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006277-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006278
6279- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6280 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006281
6282----
6283
6284**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**