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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
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000015- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
16 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
17
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000018- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
19 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
20 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
21
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000022- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
23
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000024- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
25 reference counts in some error exit cases.
26
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000027- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
28 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
29 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
30 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
31 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
32 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
33 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
34 realloc.
35
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000036- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
37 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
38
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000039- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
40 like their int counterparts.
41
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000042- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
43 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
44 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
45 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
46 for a longer write-up of the problem).
47
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000048- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
49 serializing floats.
50
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000051- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
52 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
53 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
54
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000055- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
56 278.
57
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000058- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
59 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
60 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
61 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
62 to the base class has been moved the prroper nb_* magic slot and out of
63 PyNumber_*().
64 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
65
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000066- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
67 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
68 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
69 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
70
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000071- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
72 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
73 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
74 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
75 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
76
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000077- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
78 disabled caused a crash.
79
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000080- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
81 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
82
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000083- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000084 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
85
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +000086- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
87
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000088- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +000089 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
90 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
91 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000092
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000093- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
94
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +000095- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
96 returning None.
97
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000098- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +000099 ('\') with a specific error message.
100
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000101- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
102
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000103- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
104 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
105
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000106- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000107 an ferror() call.
108
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000109- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
110 list.sort().
111
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000112- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
113 (2+3) --> (5).
114
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000115- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
116
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000117- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
118 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000119
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000120- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
121 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
122 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
123
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000124- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
125 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
126 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
127
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000128Extension Modules
129-----------------
130
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000131- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
132 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
133
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000134- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
135 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
136 for large or negative values.
137
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000138- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000139 implemented treated all integer values except 1 as false.
140
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000141- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
142
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000143- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
144 if available on the platform.
145
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000146- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
147 available on the platform.
148
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000149- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
150 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
151
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000152- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
153
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000154- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
155 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
156 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
157
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000158- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
159
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000160- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
161 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
162
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000163- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000164 file size.
165
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000166- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
167
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000168- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
169 {remove_history,replace_history}
170
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000171- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
172 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000173
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000174- stat_float_times is now True.
175
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000176- array.array objects are now picklable.
177
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000178- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
179 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
180
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000181- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
182 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
183 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
184
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000185- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
186 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000187
188Library
189-------
190
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000191- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
192
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000193- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
194 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
195
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000196- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
197 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
198 Tkdnd.
199
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000200- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
201 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
202
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000203- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
204 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
205
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000206- textwrap now processes text chucks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
207 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
208
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000209- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
210 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
211
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000212- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
213 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
214
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000215- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
216 though this can be missing in embedded interpreters
217
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000218- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
219
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000220- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
221 error messages.
222
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000223- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
224
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000225- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
226 Bug #1224621.
227
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000228- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
229 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
230 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
231 terminates by raising StopIteration.
232
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000233- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
234
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000235- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
236 component of the path.
237
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000238- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
239 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
240 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
241 class at all.
242
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000243- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
244 files to PyPI.
245
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000246- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
247 them to PyPI.
248
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000249- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
250 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
251 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
252 work as expected.
253
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000254- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
255 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
256
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000257- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000258 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
259
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000260- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
261
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000262- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
263 to build.
264
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000265- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
266 symbolic links on Windows.
267
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000268- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000269 profile.py if available.
270
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000271- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
272
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000273- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
274 in LWPCookieJar.
275
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000276- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
277
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000278- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
279
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000280- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
281
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000282- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
283
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000284- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
285
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000286- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
287
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000288- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
289
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000290- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
291
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000292- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
293 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
294 be exploited in various ways.
295
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000296- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
297
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000298- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
299
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000300- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
301
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000302- Enhancements to the csv module:
303
304 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000305 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000306 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000307 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
308 reporting.
309 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
310 dictates.
311 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000312 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000313 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000314 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
315 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000316 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
317 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000318 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000319 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
320 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
321 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
322 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
323 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
324 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
325 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
326 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
327 without first creating a dialect class.
328 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
329 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
330 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000331 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000332 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
333 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000334 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
335 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
336 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
337 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000338 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
339 This has been fixed.
340
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000341- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
342 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
343 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
344 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
345
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000346- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
347
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000348- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
349 (Bug #951915).
350
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000351- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
352 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
353 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
354 encoding alias table
355
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000356- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
357
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000358- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
359 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
360
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000361- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
362
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000363- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
364
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000365- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
366
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000367- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
368
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000369- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
370
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000371- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
372 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
373 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
374
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000375- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000376 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000377
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000378- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
379 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
380 tokenizer with very long source lines.
381
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000382- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
383 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
384
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000385- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
386 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000387
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000388- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
389 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
390
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000391- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
392 correctly.
393
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000394- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
395 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
396 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
397 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
398 between two lines.
399
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000400
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000401Build
402-----
403
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000404- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
405 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
406
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000407- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
408 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
409
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000410- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
411 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
412 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000413 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000414
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000415- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
416 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
417 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
418
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000419- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
420
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000421- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
422 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
423
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000424- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
425 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
426 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
427 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
428 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
429 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
430 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
431 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
432
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000433- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
434 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
435 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
436 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
437
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000438
439C API
440-----
441
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000442- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
443
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000444- Removed PyRange_New().
445
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000446
447Tests
448-----
449
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000450- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000451
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000452
453Documentation
454-------------
455
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000456- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
457
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000458- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
459
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000460- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
461
462- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
463
464- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
465
466- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
467
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000468- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
469 Closes bug #1166582.
470
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000471- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
472 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
473 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
474
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000475Mac
476---
477
478
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000479New platforms
480-------------
481
482- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
483
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000484
485Tools/Demos
486-----------
487
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000488- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
489
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000490- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000491
492
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000493What's New in Python 2.4 final?
494===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000495
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000496*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000497
498Core and builtins
499-----------------
500
501- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
502 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
503 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
504
505
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000506What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
507==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000508
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000509*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000510
511Core and builtins
512-----------------
513
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000514- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
515 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
516 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
517
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000518
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000519Library
520-------
521
522- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
523 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
524 raised is re-raised.
525
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000526- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
527 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
528
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000529- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
530 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
531 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
532 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
533 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
534 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
535 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
536 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
537 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
538 by the slice are recomputed now.
539
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000540- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000541
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000542Build
543-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000544
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000545- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
546 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
547 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000548
549C API
550-----
551
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000552- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
553
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000554
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000555What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
556================================
557
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000558*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000559
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000560License
561-------
562
563The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
564is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
565changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
566Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
567intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
568durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
569the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
570License::
571
572 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
573
574says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
575to Python 2.1.1.
576
577The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
578License Version 2.
579
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000580Core and builtins
581-----------------
582
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000583- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
584 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
585 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
586 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
587 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
588 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
589 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
590 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
591 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
592 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
593
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000594- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000595
596Extension Modules
597-----------------
598
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000599- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
600 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
601 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
602 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000603
604Library
605-------
606
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000607- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
608 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
609 returned.
610
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000611- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
612
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000613- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
614 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
615
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000616- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
617
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000618- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
619 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000620
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000621- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
622
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000623- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
624
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000625- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000626 the source code is updated and reloaded.
627
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000628Build
629-----
630
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000631- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000632
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000633What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
634================================
635
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000636*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000637
638Core and builtins
639-----------------
640
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000641- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000642 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
643
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000644- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
645 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
646 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
647 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
648
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000649- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
650 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
651
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000652- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
653 constant.
654
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000655- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
656 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
657 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
658 large), and to anomalies such as
659 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
660 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
661 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
662 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000663
664Extension modules
665-----------------
666
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000667- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
668 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000669 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
670 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
671 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000672
673Library
674-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000675
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000676- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000677 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000678 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
679 --swig-cpp.
680
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000681- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
682 it is set.
683
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000684- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000685
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000686- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
687 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
688 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
689 Closes bug #1039270.
690
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000691- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000692
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000693 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000694 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
695 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
696 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
697 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
698 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
699 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
700 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
701 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
702 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
703 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
704 + Updates to documentation.
705
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000706- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
707 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
708 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
709 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
710
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000711- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000712
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000713- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
714 applications should use the getmember function.
715
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000716- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
717
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000718- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
719 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
720 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
721 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
722 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
723 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
724 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
725 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
726 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
727
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000728- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
729 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000730 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000731
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000732- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
733 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
734 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
735 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
736 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
737 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
738 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
739 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000740
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000741- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
742 the new public features (of which there are many).
743
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000744- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000745 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
746 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
747 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
748 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000749 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000750
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000751- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
752
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000753- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
754 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
755 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
756 options.
757
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000758- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
759 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
760 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
761 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
762 conditions under which non-string values work.
763
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000764Build
765-----
766
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000767- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
768 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
769 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
770
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000771- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
772 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
773 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
774 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
775 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000776
777C API
778-----
779
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000780- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
781 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
782
783- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
784
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000785- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
786 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
787 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
788 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
789 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
790 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
791 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
792 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
793 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
794
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000795- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
796
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000797- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
798 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
799 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000800
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000801Tests
802-----
803
804- test__locale ported to unittest
805
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000806Mac
807---
808
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000809- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
810 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
811 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000812
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000813Tools/Demos
814-----------
815
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000816- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
817 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
818 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
819 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
820 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000821
822
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000823What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
824=================================
825
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000826*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000827
828Core and builtins
829-----------------
830
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000831- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000832 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
833
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000834- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
835 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
836 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
837 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
838 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
839 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
840 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
841 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000842 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
843 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
844 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
845 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
846 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000847
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000848- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
849 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
850 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
851 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
852 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
853
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000854- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
855
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000856- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
857 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
858
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000859- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
860 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
861 modified the list.
862
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000863- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
864 functions is now writable.
865
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000866- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
867 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
868 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
869 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
870
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000871- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
872 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
873 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
874 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
875 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000876
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000877- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
878 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
879
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000880Extension modules
881-----------------
882
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000883- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
884
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000885- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
886 data.
887
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000888- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
889 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
890 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
891 supposed to have been truncated away.
892
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000893- Added socket.socketpair().
894
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000895- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
896 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
897
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000898- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000899 versions of Python, have now been removed.
900
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000901Library
902-------
903
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000904- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000905 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000906
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000907- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
908 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
909
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000910- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
911 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
912
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000913- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
914
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000915- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
916 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000917
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000918- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
919 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
920
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000921- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
922
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000923- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
924
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000925- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
926
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000927- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
928 Percivall.
929
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000930- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
931 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
932
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000933- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
934 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
935 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000936 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000937
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000938- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
939 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
940 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
941 and exponent.
942
943- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
944
945- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +0000946 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000947 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
948
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000949- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
950 to the readline module.
951
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000952- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000953 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
954 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000955
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000956- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
957 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
958 contains symlinks.
959
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000960- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
961 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
962
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000963- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
964 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
965 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
966
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000967- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
968 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
969 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
970 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
971 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
972 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
973 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
974 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
975 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
976 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
977 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
978 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
979 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
980
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000981- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
982
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000983Tools/Demos
984-----------
985
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000986- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
987 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
988
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000989- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
990
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000991Build
992-----
993
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000994- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
995 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
996 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
997 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
998 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
999 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1000 plans to do so.
1001
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001002- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1003 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1004
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001005- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1006 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1007
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001008- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1009 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1010
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001011- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1012 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1013
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001014- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1015 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1016
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001017C API
1018-----
1019
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001020..
1021
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001022Documentation
1023-------------
1024
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001025- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1026 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1027
1028- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1029 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1030 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001031
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001032New platforms
1033-------------
1034
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001035- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1036
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001037Tests
1038-----
1039
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001040..
1041
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001042Windows
1043-------
1044
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001045- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1046 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1047 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1048 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1049 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1050 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1051 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1052 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1053 the problem.
1054
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001055Mac
1056---
1057
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001058..
1059
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001060
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001061What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1062=================================
1063
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001064*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001065
1066Core and builtins
1067-----------------
1068
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001069- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1070 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1071 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1072 sensitive code.
1073
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001074- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001075 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001076
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001077 @staticmethod
1078 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001079
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001080 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001081
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001082- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1083 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1084 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1085 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1086 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1087 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1088 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1089 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1090 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1091 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1092 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1093
1094 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1095 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1096 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1097 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1098 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1099 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1100 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1101
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001102- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1103 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1104
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001105- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001106 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001107
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001108- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001109 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001110 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1111
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001112- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001113 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1114 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1115
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001116- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1117 types that support garbage collection.
1118
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001119- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1120
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001121- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1122 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1123 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1124 Jython.
1125
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001126- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1127
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001128- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1129 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1130
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001131- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1132 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1133 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001134
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001135- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1136 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1137 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1138
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001139Extension modules
1140-----------------
1141
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001142- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1143
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001144Library
1145-------
1146
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001147- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1148 TIS-620
1149
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001150- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1151 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1152 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1153 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1154 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1155 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1156 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1157 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1158 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1159 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1160
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001161- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1162
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001163- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1164 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1165 same as when the argument is omitted).
1166 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1167
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001168- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1169
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001170- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1171 schemes are offered.
1172
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001173- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1174
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001175- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1176 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1177 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1178
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001179- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1180
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001181- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1182 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1183
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001184- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1185 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1186 when dummy_threading is being used.
1187
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001188- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1189 from a tarfile.
1190
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001191- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001192 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001193
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001194- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1195 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1196 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1197 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1198
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001199- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1200 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1201
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001202- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1203 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1204 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1205 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1206 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1207 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1208 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1209 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1210 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1211 by some other method in progress).
1212
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001213- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1214 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1215 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001216
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001217- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1218
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001219- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1220 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1221 AM Kuchling.
1222
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001223- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1224 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1225 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1226
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001227- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1228 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1229 instead of unsigned.
1230
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001231- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001232 no longer part of the public API.
1233
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001234- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1235 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1236 string methods of the same name).
1237
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001238- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001239 SF patch 945642.
1240
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001241- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1242
1243 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1244
1245 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1246 DocTestSuites.
1247
1248- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1249 that provide thread-local data.
1250
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001251- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1252 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1253
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001254- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1255
1256- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1257 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1258 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1259
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001260- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1261
1262 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1263 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1264 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001265
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001266 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1267 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1268 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1269 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1270
1271 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1272 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1273
1274 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1275 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1276 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1277 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1278
1279 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1280 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1281 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1282 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1283 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1284
1285 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1286 wrapping help output.
1287
1288 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1289 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1290 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001291
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001292C API
1293-----
1294
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001295- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1296 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1297 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1298 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1299 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1300 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1301 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1302 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1303 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1304 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1305 its visible semantics have not changed.
1306
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001307- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1308 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1309
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001310Documentation
1311-------------
1312
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001313- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001314
1315 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001316 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001317
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001318 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001319
1320 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1321
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001322- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001323
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001324Tests
1325-----
1326
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001327- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001328 platforms that use the Makefile.
1329
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001330- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1331 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1332 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1333
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001334
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001335What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1336=================================
1337
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001338*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001339
1340Core and builtins
1341-----------------
1342
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001343- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1344 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1345 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1346 objects now (one object instead of three).
1347
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001348- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1349 Windows DLLs.
1350
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001351- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1352 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001353
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001354- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1355 a new .pyc magic.
1356
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001357- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1358 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1359 be there.
1360
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001361- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1362 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1363 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1364
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001365- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1366 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1367 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1368
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001369- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1370
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001371- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1372 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1373 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001374
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001375- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1376 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1377
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001378- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1379
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001380- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001381 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001382
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001383- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1384
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001385- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1386
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001387- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1388 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1389
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001390- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1391 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1392 Fixes bug #858016 .
1393
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001394- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1395 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1396 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1397
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001398- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1399 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1400 improves their performance (about 35%).
1401
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001402- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1403 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1404 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1405
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001406- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1407 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1408 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1409 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1410
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001411- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1412 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001413 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001414 length is not known).
1415
1416- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1417 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001418 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1419 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001420 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1421
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001422- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1423 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1424
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001425- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1426 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1427 keyword arguments.
1428
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001429- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1430 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1431 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1432
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001433- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1434 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1435 cases.
1436
1437- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1438 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1439 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1440 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1441 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1442 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1443 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1444 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1445 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1446 a release build.
1447
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001448- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1449 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1450
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001451- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001452 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001453
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001454- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1455 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1456 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1457 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1458 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1459 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1460 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1461 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1462 destroyed.
1463
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001464- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1465 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1466 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1467 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1468 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1469 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1470 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1471 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1472
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001473- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1474 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1475 character other than a space.
1476
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001477- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1478 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1479 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1480 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1481 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1482 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1483 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1484 attributes with the same name.
1485
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001486- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1487 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1488 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1489 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1490 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1491 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1492 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1493 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1494 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1495 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1496 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1497 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1498 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1499 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001500
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001501- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1502 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1503 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1504 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1505 This has been repaired.
1506
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001507- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1508
1509- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1510
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001511- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1512 over a sequence.
1513
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001514- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001515 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001516
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001517- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1518
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001519- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1520 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1521 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1522 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1523 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1524 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1525 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1526 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1527
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001528- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1529 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1530 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1531
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001532- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1533 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1534 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1535 freelist.
1536
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001537- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1538 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1539
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001540- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1541 number.
1542
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001543- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1544 a TypeError exception.
1545
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001546- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1547 820195.
1548
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001549- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1550 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1551 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1552
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001553- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001554 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1555 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001556
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001557- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1558 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1559 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1560
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001561- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1562 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001563 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001564
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001565- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001566 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1567 the first call.
1568
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001569
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001570Extension modules
1571-----------------
1572
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001573- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1574 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1575
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001576- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1577 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1578 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1579 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1580 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1581 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1582 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001583
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001584- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1585
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001586- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1587
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001588- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1589 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1590
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001591- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1592 fewer false positives.
1593
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001594- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1595 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1596
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001597- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001598 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1599
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001600- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001601 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001602 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001603 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1604 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001605
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001606- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1607 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1608 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1609 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1610
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001611- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1612 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1613 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1614 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1615 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1616 #897625.
1617
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001618- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1619 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1620
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001621- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1622 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1623 and pops on either side of the deque.
1624
1625- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1626 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1627
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001628- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1629 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1630 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1631 other functions that expect a function argument.
1632
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001633- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1634
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001635- os.getsid was added.
1636
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001637- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1638 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1639 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1640
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001641- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1642
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001643- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1644
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001645- readline.clear_history was added.
1646
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001647- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1648
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001649- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1650
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001651- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1652
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001653- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1654
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001655- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1656
1657- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1658
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001659- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1660
1661- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1662
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001663- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1664 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1665 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1666
1667- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1668 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1669 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1670 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1671 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1672 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1673 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1674
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001675- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1676 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1677 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1678 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001679
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001680- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001681 iterators from a single iterable.
1682
1683- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1684 of raising a TypeError exception.
1685
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001686- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1687 as parameter.
1688
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001689Library
1690-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001691
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001692- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1693 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1694 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001695
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001696- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1697 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1698 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001699
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001700- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001701
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001702- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1703 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001704
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001705- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1706 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1707
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001708- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1709
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001710- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001711 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001712
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001713- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001714 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001715
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001716- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1717
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001718- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1719 on cygwin and mingw32.
1720
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001721- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1722
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001723- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1724 module.
1725
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001726- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1727 installation scheme for all platforms.
1728
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001729- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001730 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001731
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001732- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1733 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1734 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1735
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001736- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1737 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1738 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1739
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001740- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1741
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001742- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1743
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001744- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1745 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1746
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001747- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1748 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1749 type pattern with the same value exists.
1750
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001751- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1752 when run from the command prompt).
1753
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001754- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1755 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1756
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001757- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1758 default sort).
1759
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001760- Added global runctx function to profile module
1761
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001762- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1763
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001764- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1765
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001766- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1767
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001768- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001769 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1770 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1771 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1772 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1773 accordingly.
1774
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001775- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1776 decoding standards.
1777
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001778- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1779 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1780 called for all requests.
1781
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001782- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1783 they are passed to the compiler.
1784
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001785- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1786 indent, width and depth.
1787
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001788- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1789 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1790
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001791- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1792 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1793
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001794- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1795
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001796- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1797
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001798- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1799
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001800- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1801 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1802
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001803- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001804 for better performance.
1805
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001806- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001807
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001808- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1809 a string).
1810
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001811- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1812
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001813- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1814
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001815- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1816
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001817- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1818
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001819- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1820 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1821 list of fieldnames.
1822
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001823- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1824 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1825
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001826- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1827
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001828- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1829 empty lists.
1830
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001831- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1832 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1833 and shelves.
1834
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001835- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1836 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1837
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001838- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001839 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1840 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001841
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001842- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1843 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001844 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001845
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001846- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001847 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1848 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1849
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001850- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1851 and removed in Py2.4.
1852
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001853- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1854
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001855- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1856
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001857Tools/Demos
1858-----------
1859
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001860- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1861 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1862
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001863- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1864
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001865- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1866 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1867 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1868 destination in situations where both files are given.
1869
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001870- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1871 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1872 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1873 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1874
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001875- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1876
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001877- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1878 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1879 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1880 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1881 now.
1882
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001883- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1884 in effect
1885
1886- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1887 C-c C-h
1888
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001889- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1890 -d option was given.
1891
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001892Build
1893-----
1894
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001895- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1896 build under OS X.
1897
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001898- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1899 --enable-profiling.
1900
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001901- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1902 is configured --with-tsc.
1903
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001904- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1905 on AMD64.
1906
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001907- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1908 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1909
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001910- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1911 removed.
1912
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001913- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1914 supported (see PEP 11).
1915
1916- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1917
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001918- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1919
1920- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1921 (see PEP 11).
1922
1923- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1924 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1925
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001926C API
1927-----
1928
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001929- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1930 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1931 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1932
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001933- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1934 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1935 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1936 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1937
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001938- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1939 generator objects.
1940
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001941- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1942 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001943 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1944 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001945
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001946- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1947 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1948
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001949- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1950 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1951 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1952 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1953 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1954
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001955- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1956 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1957 about 10% faster.
1958
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001959- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1960 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1961
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001962- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1963 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1964 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1965 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1966
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001967Windows
1968-------
1969
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001970- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1971 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1972 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1973 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1974
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001975- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1976 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1977 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1978
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001979
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001980What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1981===============================
1982
1983*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1984
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001985IDLE
1986----
1987
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001988- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1989 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1990 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1991 context-menu actions.
1992
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001993- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1994 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1995 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1996 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1997 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1998 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1999 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2000 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2001 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2002
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002003
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002004What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2005=============================================
2006
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002007*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002008
2009Core and builtins
2010-----------------
2011
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002012- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002013 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002014 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2015
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002016Extension modules
2017-----------------
2018
2019- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2020 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2021 than once. This has been fixed.
2022
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002023- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2024 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2025 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2026 call.
2027
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002028- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2029
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002030Library
2031-------
2032
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002033- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2034 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2035
2036- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2037 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2038 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2039 restored.
2040
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002041IDLE
2042----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002043
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002044- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002045
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002046Build
2047-----
2048
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002049- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2050 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2051
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002052C API
2053-----
2054
2055Windows
2056-------
2057
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002058- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2059 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2060
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002061- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2062
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002063Mac
2064---
2065
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002066- Various fixes to pimp.
2067
2068- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2069
2070- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2071 more problems than it solves.
2072
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002073
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002074What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2075=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002076
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002077*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2078
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002079Core and builtins
2080-----------------
2081
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002082- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2083 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2084
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002085- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2086 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002087 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002088
2089- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2090 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2091 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002092 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002093
2094- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2095 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002096
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002097- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2098 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2099 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2100
2101- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002102 770247.
2103
2104- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002105
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002106Extension modules
2107-----------------
2108
2109- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2110 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2111
2112- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2113
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002114- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2115
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002116- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2117 contained within the _strptime module.
2118
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002119- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2120 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2121
2122- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002123 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2124
2125- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2126 the find_class attribute, if present.
2127
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002128- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002129
2130 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2131 (SF bug 763298).
2132
2133 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002134 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2135 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2136 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002137
2138 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2139
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002140Library
2141-------
2142
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002143- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2144
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002145- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2146 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2147 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2148 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2149 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2150 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2151 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2152 or Tester().
2153
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002154- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2155 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2156 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2157 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2158 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2159 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2160 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2161 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2162 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002163
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002164 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002165
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002166- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2167 weren't before was an oversight.
2168
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002169- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2170 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2171
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002172- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2173 when there are no lines.
2174
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002175- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2176 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2177
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002178- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2179 to child processes.
2180
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002181- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2182
2183- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2184
2185- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2186 xmlrpclib.
2187
2188- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2189 responses.
2190
2191- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2192 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2193
2194- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2195 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2196 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2197
2198- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2199 used as patterns.
2200
2201- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2202 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2203 than Tk 8.3.
2204
2205- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2206
2207- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002208
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002209Tools/Demos
2210-----------
2211
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002212- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2213
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002214- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2215
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002216- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002217
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002218Build
2219-----
2220
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002221- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2222
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002223- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2224
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002225- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2226 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002227
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002228- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2229 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2230 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002231
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002232C API
2233-----
2234
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002235- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2236 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2237
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002238Windows
2239-------
2240
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002241- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2242 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2243 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2244 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2245 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2246 Python exception ::
2247
2248 thread.error: can't start new thread
2249
2250 is raised now.
2251
2252- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2253 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2254 instead of from DLL teardown.
2255
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002256Mac
2257---
2258
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002259- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002260 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002261 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2262 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2263 the executable in the bundle.
2264
2265- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002266
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002267- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2268
2269- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2270 on Panther.
2271
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002272What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2273================================
2274
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002275*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002276
2277Core and builtins
2278-----------------
2279
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002280- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2281 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2282 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2283 with the -i option.
2284
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002285- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2286 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2287
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002288- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2289 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2290
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002291- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2292 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2293 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2294 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2295 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2296 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2297 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2298 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2299 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2300 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2301 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2302 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2303 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002304
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002305- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2306 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2307 embedded in a lambda expression.
2308
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002309- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2310 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2311 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2312 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2313 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2314
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002315- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2316 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2317 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2318
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002319- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2320 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2321
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002322- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2323 It's writable again.
2324
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002325- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2326 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2327 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002328 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002329
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002330- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2331 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2332 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2333
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002334Extension modules
2335-----------------
2336
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002337- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2338 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2339
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002340- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2341 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2342 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2343 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2344
2345- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2346 collection.
2347
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002348- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2349 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2350 unique within a single program run.
2351
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002352- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2353 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2354
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002355- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2356 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2357
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002358- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2359 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002360
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002361- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2362
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002363- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2364 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2365
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002366- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2367 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2368 for many BSD-derived systems.
2369
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002370
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002371Library
2372-------
2373
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002374- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2375 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2376 primary ones:
2377
2378 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2379 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2380 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2381
2382 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2383 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2384 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2385 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2386 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2387 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2388
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002389- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2390 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2391 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2392 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2393 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2394 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2395 argument.
2396
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002397- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2398 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2399 in the archive.
2400
2401- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2402 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2403
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002404- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2405 569574).
2406
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002407- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2408 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2409 no more.
2410
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002411- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2412 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2413 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2414 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2415 code coverage.
2416
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002417- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2418 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2419 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002420 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2421 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002422
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002423- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2424 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2425 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002426 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002427
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002428- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2429
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002430- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2431 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2432 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2433 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2434
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002435- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2436 handling.
2437
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002438- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2439 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2440
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002441- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2442 in socket.py.
2443
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002444- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2445
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002446- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2447 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2448 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2449 opener with proxy support.
2450
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002451- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2452
2453- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2454
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002455Tools/Demos
2456-----------
2457
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002458- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2459
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002460- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2461
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002462- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2463 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002464
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002465- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2466 files.
2467
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002468Build
2469-----
2470
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002471- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002472 different root directory.
2473
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002474C API
2475-----
2476
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002477- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2478 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2479 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2480 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2481 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2482 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2483 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2484 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2485 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2486 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2487
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002488- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2489 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2490 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2491 from Python.
2492
2493
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002494New platforms
2495-------------
2496
2497None this time.
2498
2499Tests
2500-----
2501
2502- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2503 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2504
2505Windows
2506-------
2507
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002508- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2509
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002510- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2511 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2512 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2513 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2514 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2515 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2516 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2517 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2518 that's what it's for.
2519
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002520Mac
2521---
2522
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002523- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2524 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2525 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2526 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002527- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2528 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2529- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002530
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002531SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2532------------------------------------
2533
2534430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2535598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2536622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2537661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2538683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2539697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2540713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2541724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2542727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2543729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2544730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2545731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2546732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2547733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2548735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2549740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2550744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2551745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2552747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2553749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2554751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2555753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2556755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2557757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2558760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2559
2560
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002561What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2562================================
2563
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002564*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002565
2566Core and builtins
2567-----------------
2568
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002569- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2570 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2571
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002572- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2573 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2574 and cannot be strings).
2575
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002576- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2577 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2578 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2579 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2580
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002581- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2582 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2583 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2584 Python itself.
2585
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002586- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2587 the referenced object, if it has one.
2588
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002589- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2590 the thread started at
2591 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2592
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002593- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2594 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2595 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2596 placed on a list index.
2597
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002598- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2599 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2600 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2601 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2602
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002603- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2604 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2605 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2606 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2607 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2608 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2609 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2610
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002611- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2612 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2613 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2614 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2615 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2616
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002617- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2618 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002619
2620- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2621 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2622 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2623 #693195.)
2624
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002625- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2626 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002627
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002628- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002629 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002630 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2631 interpreter executions, would fail.
2632
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002633- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002634 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002635 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002636
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002637Extension modules
2638-----------------
2639
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002640- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2641 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2642 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2643 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2644
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002645- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2646 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2647
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002648- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2649 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2650 and Greg Chapman.)
2651
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002652- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2653 recursively.
2654
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002655- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002656 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2657 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2658 leaks.
2659
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002660- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2661
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002662- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2663 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2664 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2665 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2666 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2667 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2668 #705836.
2669
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002670- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002671 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2672
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002673- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2674 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2675 See SF bug #692416.
2676
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002677- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2678 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2679
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002680- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2681 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2682 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002683
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002684- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002685 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2686 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2687
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002688- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2689 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2690 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2691 timeouts to work properly.
2692
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002693Library
2694-------
2695
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002696- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2697 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2698 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2699 future release.
2700
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002701- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2702 for querying platform dependent features.
2703
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002704- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002705
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002706- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2707 pickle protocol versions.
2708
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002709- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2710 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2711 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2712
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002713- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2714
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002715- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2716 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2717 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2718 modules.
2719
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002720- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2721 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2722 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2723
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002724- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2725 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2726
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002727- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2728 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2729 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2730
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002731- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002732 MS Office extensions.
2733
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002734- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2735 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2736
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002737- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2738 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2739
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002740- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2741 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2742 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2743 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2744 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2745 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2746
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002747- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2748 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2749 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002750
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002751- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2752 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2753 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2754
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002755- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2756
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002757- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2758 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2759 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2760
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002761Tools/Demos
2762-----------
2763
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002764- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2765 See the module docstring for details.
2766
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002767Build
2768-----
2769
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002770- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2771 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002772
2773C API
2774-----
2775
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002776- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2777
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002778- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2779 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2780 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2781
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002782- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2783 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002784
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002785 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2786 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2787 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002788
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002789- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002790 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2791
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002792- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2793 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2794 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002795
2796New platforms
2797-------------
2798
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002799None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002800
2801Tests
2802-----
2803
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002804- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2805 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002806
2807Windows
2808-------
2809
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002810- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2811 function.
2812
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002813- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2814 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002815
2816Mac
2817---
2818
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002819- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2820 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002821
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002822- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2823 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002824
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002825- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2826 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2827 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002828
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002829- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002830 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2831 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002832
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002833- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2834 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002835
2836
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002837What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2838=================================
2839
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002840*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002841
2842Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002843-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002844
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002845- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2846 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2847 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2848
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002849- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2850 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2851 (SF patch #664376.)
2852
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002853- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2854 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2855 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2856 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2857 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2858 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002859 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002860
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002861- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2862 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2863 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2864 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002865 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002866
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002867- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2868 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2869 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2870 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2871 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2872 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2873 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2874 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2875 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2876 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2877 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2878
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002879- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2880 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2881 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2882 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2883 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2884 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2885
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002886- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2887 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2888
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002889- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2890 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2891 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2892 case.)
2893
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002894- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2895 passed as unicode strings.
2896
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002897- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2898 See SF bug #683467.
2899
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002900- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2901 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2902
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002903- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2904
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002905- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2906
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002907- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2908 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2909 arguments.
2910
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002911- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2912 See SF bug #667147.
2913
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002914- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002915 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002916 See SF bug #676155.
2917
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002918- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002919 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002920 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2921 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2922 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2923 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2924 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2925 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002926
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002927Extension modules
2928-----------------
2929
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002930- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2931 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2932 tp_as_number pointer.
2933
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002934- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2935 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2936 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2937 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2938 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2939
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002940- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2941
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002942- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2943
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002944- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002945 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002946 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2947 patch #678531.)
2948
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002949- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2950 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2951
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002952- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2953 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2954
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002955- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2956
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002957- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2958 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2959 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2960
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002961- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2962
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002963- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2964 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2965
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002966- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002967
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002968- datetime changes:
2969
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002970 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2971
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002972 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2973 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2974 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2975 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2976 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2977 now.
2978
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002979 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002980 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2981 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002982
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002983 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002984 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002985 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2986 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2987 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2988 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002989
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002990 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2991 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2992 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002993 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2994
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002995 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2996 by a later example coded by Guido.
2997
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002998 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002999 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3000 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3001 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003002 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3003 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3004
3005 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3006 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3007 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3008 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3009 tzinfo subclass instance.
3010
3011 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3012 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3013 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3014 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3015 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3016 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3017 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3018 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003019
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003020 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3021 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3022 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3023 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3024 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003025 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3026
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003027 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003028
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003029 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3030 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3031 as a naive datetime object.
3032
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003033 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3034 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3035 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3036
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003037 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3038 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3039 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3040 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3041 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3042 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3043 comparison.
3044
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003045 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3046 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3047 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3048 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003049 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003050
3051 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003052
3053 and ::
3054
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003055 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3056
3057 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3058 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3059 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3060 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3061
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003062 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3063 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3064 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3065 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3066 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3067
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003068 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3069 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003070 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3071 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003072
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003073Library
3074-------
3075
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003076- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3077 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3078
3079- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3080 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3081 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3082 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3083 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3084 See PEP 307 for details.
3085
3086- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3087 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3088
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003089- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3090 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003091 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003092 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3093 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003094 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003095
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003096- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3097 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3098
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003099- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3100 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3101 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3102
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003103- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3104
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003105- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3106 exception.
3107
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003108- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3109 class.
3110
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003111- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3112 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3113 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3114
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003115- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3116 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3117
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003118- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003119 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3120 See SF bug #659228.
3121
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003122- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3123 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3124 See SF patch #651082.
3125
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003126- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003127
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003128- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3129 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3130
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003131- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003132 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003133
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003134- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3135 DOS paths from other platforms.
3136
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003137Tools/Demos
3138-----------
3139
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003140- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3141 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3142 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3143 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3144 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3145 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3146 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3147 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3148 example:
3149
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003150 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3151 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003152
3153 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3154
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003155
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003156Build
3157-----
3158
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003159- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3160 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3161 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003162 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3163
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003164 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3165
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003166- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3167 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3168 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3169 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3170 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3171 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3172 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3173 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3174 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3175
3176- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3177 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3178 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3179 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3180
3181- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3182 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3183
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003184C API
3185-----
3186
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003187- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3188 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003189
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003190- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3191 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3192 tp_as_number pointer.
3193
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003194- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3195 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3196 (SF #681367)
3197
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003198- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3199 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3200 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3201 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003202
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003203Tests
3204-----
3205
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003206- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003207 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3208 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3209 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3210 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3211 pydoc.)
3212
3213- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3214
3215- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003216
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003217Windows
3218-------
3219
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003220- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3221 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3222 time).
3223
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003224- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3225 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3226
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003227- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3228 release without strong cryptography.
3229
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003230- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003231 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003232
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003233- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3234 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3235
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003236Mac
3237---
3238
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003239- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3240 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003241
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003242- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3243 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3244 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003245
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003246- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3247 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003248
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003249- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3250 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3251 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3252 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003253
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003254- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003255 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3256 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3257 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003258
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003259
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003260What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003261=================================
3262
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003263*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003264
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003265Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003266--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003267
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003268- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3269
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003270- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3271 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003272 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003273 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003274 a different meaning than before.
3275
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003276- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003277 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003278 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003279
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003280- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003281 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003282 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003283
3284- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3285 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3286 and deallocation.
3287
3288- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3289 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3290
3291- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3292 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3293 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3294 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3295 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3296
3297- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3298 now detected by the garbage collector.
3299
3300- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3301 [SF bug 519621]
3302
3303- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3304 identifier.
3305
3306- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3307 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3308 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3309 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3310 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3311 [SF bug 563060]
3312
3313- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3314 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3315 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3316 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3317 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3318
3319- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3320 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3321 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3322
3323- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3324
3325- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3326 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3327 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3328 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3329 state of the slots would be lost.)
3330
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003331Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003332-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003333
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003334- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003335 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3336 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3337 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3338 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003339 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3340 Jython 2.1.
3341
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003342- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003343 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003344 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3345 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3346 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3347 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3348 these, see PEP 302.
3349
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003350- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3351 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3352 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3353
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003354- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3355 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3356 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3357
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003358- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3359 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3360 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3361
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003362- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3363 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3364 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3365 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3366 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3367 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3368 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3369 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3370 releases or implementations.
3371
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003372- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003373 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3374 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003375
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003376- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3377 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3378
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003379- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3380 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3381 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3382
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003383- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3384 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3385
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003386- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3387 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003388 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3389 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003390
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003391- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3392 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3393 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3394 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3395 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3396
3397 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3398 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3399 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3400 pattern.
3401
3402 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3403 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3404 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3405 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3406
3407 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3408 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3409 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3410 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3411 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3412 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3413
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003414- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3415 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3416 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3417 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3418 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3419 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3420 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3421 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003422
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003423- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3424 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3425 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3426 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3427 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003428 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3429 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3430 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3431 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3432 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3433 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3434 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003435
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003436- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3437 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3438
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003439- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3440 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3441 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3442 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3443 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3444 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3445 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3446 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3447 to Zack Weinberg!
3448
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003449- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3450 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3451 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3452 type. This has been fixed now.
3453
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003454- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3455 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3456 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3457
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003458- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3459 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3460 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3461 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3462 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3463 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3464 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3465 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003466 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003467
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003468- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3469 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3470 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003471
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003472- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3473 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3474 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3475 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3476 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3477 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3478 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3479 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003480 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003481 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3482 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3483
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003484- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3485 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3486 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3487 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3488 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3489 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3490 this.)
3491
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003492- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3493 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003494 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003495 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003496 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3497 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003498 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3499 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003500
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003501- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3502 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3503 currently running.
3504
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003505- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3506 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3507 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3508 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3509
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003510- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3511 as directory names.
3512
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003513- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3514 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3515
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003516- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3517 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3518
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003519- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003520 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3521 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003522
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003523- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3524 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3525 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3526 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3527 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3528
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003529- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3530 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3531 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3532 removed.
3533
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003534- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3535 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3536 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3537
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003538- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3539 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3540 to __debug__.
3541
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003542- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3543 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3544 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3545
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003546- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3547 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3548 deprecated now.
3549
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003550- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3551 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3552 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003553
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003554- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3555 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3556 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3557 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3558 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003559
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003560- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3561 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3562
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003563- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3564 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3565 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003566 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003567 is backward compatible.
3568
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003569- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3570 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3571 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3572 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3573 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3574
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003575- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3576 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3577 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3578 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3579 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3580 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003581
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003582- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3583 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3584
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003585- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3586 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3587
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003588- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3589 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3590 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3591 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3592 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3593
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003594- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3595 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3596 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3597
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003598- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003599 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3600
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003601- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3602 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3603 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003604
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003605- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3606 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3607
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003608- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3609 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3610 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3611
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003612- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3613
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003614Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003615-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003616
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003617- Added three operators to the operator module:
3618 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3619 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3620 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3621
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003622- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3623
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003624- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3625 archives.
3626
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003627- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3628 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3629 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3630
3631 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3632
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003633- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3634 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3635 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003636 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003637
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003638- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3639 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3640 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3641 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003642 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3643 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3644 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3645 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003646
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003647- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3648 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003649
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003650- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3651
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003652- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3653 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3654
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003655- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3656 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3657 supported.
3658
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003659- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3660
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003661- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3662 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003663
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003664- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3665 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3666
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003667- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3668
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003669- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3670 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3671
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003672- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3673 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3674 functions but callable type objects.
3675
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003676- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003677 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003678 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003679
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003680- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3681 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003682
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003683- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3684 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003685
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003686- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3687 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3688 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3689 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3690
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003691- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3692 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003693
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003694- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3695 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3696 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3697 and __imul__.
3698
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003699- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003700 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3701 is called.
3702
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003703- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3704 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3705 interpreter was compiled.
3706
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003707- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3708 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3709 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003710 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003711 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3712 1, not 2.
3713
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003714- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3715 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3716 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3717 limit.
3718
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003719- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3720 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3721 bug #623464.
3722
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003723- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3724 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3725 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3726 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3727
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003728Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003729-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003730
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003731- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3732
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003733- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3734 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3735 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3736 with Python 2.3a2.
3737
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003738- os.path exposes getctime.
3739
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003740- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003741 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003742 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003743 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003744 unit tests of floating point results.
3745
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003746- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3747 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3748 has been increased.
3749
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003750- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3751 executed.
3752
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003753- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3754 postinstallation script.
3755
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003756- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3757 test the current module.
3758
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003759- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003760 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3761 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3762 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3763 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3764
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003765- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003766 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003767 Ward's Optik package.
3768
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003769- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3770 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3771 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3772 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3773
3774- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3775 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003776 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003777
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003778- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3779 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3780 shelf are binary pickles.
3781
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003782- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3783 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3784
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003785- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3786 modules are iterators now.
3787
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003788- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3789 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3790 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3791 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3792 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3793 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003794
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003795- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3796 with their entity value.
3797
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003798- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3799
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003800- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3801 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003802
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003803- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3804 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003805 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003806
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003807- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3808 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3809 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3810 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3811 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3812 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3813 main():
3814
3815 import locale
3816 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3817
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003818- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3819 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3820
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003821- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3822 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3823 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3824 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3825 to the new standard.
3826
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003827- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3828 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3829 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3830 an extension to the database.
3831
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003832- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3833 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3834 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3835 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003836 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003837
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003838- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003839 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003840
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003841- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3842 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3843 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3844 bounded integers.
3845
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003846- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3847 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3848 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3849 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3850 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3851 in existence.
3852
3853 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3854 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3855 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3856 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3857 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3858 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3859
3860 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3861 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3862 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3863 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3864
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003865- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3866 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3867 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3868
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003869- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3870
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003871- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3872 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3873 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3874 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3875
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003876- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3877 argument.
3878
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003879- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3880 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3881 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3882 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3883 [SF patch 560794].
3884
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003885- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3886 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3887 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003888 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3889 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3890 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003891
3892- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3893 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003894
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003895- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3896 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3897 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3898 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003899
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003900- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3901 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3902 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3903 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3904 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3905
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003906- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003907
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003908- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3909
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003910- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3911 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3912 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3913 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3914 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3915 identical to None.
3916
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003917- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3918 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3919 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3920 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3921 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3922 results now.
3923
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003924- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3925 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3926
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003927- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3928 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3929 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3930 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3931 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3932 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3933 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3934 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3935
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003936- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3937
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003938- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3939 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3940
3941- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3942 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3943 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3944 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3945 and other systems.
3946
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003947- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3948 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3949 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3950 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 +00003951 work well with these.
3952
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003953- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3954
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003955- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003956 connections.
3957
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003958- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3959 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3960 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3961
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003962- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3963 sets
3964
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003965- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3966 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3967 name.
3968
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003969- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3970 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3971 passed in.
3972
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003973- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003974 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003975 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3976 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003977
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003978- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3979
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003980- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3981
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003982- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3983 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3984 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3985
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003986- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3987 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3988 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3989 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003990 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003991
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003992- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003993 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003994 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003995
3996- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3997 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3998 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3999
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004000- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004001 the value of its expression argument.
4002
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004003- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4004 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4005 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4006
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004007- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4008 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4009 skipstone browser was included.
4010
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004011- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4012 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4013
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004014Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004015-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004016
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004017- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4018 names in addition to accepting file names.
4019
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004020- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4021 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4022 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4023 still used and useful.)
4024
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004025- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4026 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4027 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4028 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004029
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004030- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4031 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4032 the generated binary.
4033
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004034Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004035-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004036
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004037- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4038
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004039- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4040 except in the hands of experts.
4041
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004042- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004043 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4044 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4045 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004046
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004047- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4048 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4049 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4050 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4051 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4052 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4053 builds.
4054
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004055- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4056 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4057 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4058 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4059 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4060 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4061 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4062 new type.
4063
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004064- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004065
4066 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4067 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4068 positive infinities.
4069
4070 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4071 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4072 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4073 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4074 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4075 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4076 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4077
4078 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4079
4080 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4081
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004082- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4083 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4084 size of the executable.
4085
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004086- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4087 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4088 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4089 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004090
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004091- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4092
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004093- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4094 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4095 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004096
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004097- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4098 well as Unix.
4099
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004100- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4101 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4102 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4103 modules in the README file for details.
4104
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004105C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004106-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004107
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004108- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4109 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004110 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004111 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004112 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004113
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004114- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4115 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4116 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4117 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4118 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4119 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004120 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004121 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4122 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4123 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4124 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4125 aligned.)
4126
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004127- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4128 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4129 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4130
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004131- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4132 level.
4133
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004134- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4135 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4136 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4137 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4138 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4139
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004140- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4141 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4142 code.
4143
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004144- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4145 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4146 adjusting for negative indices.
4147
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004148- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4149 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4150 object.
4151
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004152- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4153 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4154 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4155
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004156- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4157 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004158
4159- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4160
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004161- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4162 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4163 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4164 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4165
4166- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4167
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004168- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004169
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004170- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004171 without going through the buffer API.
4172
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004173- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004174
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004175- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4176 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4177 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4178 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4179
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004180- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4181 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4182
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004183- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004184 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4185
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004186New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004187-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004188
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004189- OpenVMS is now supported.
4190
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004191- AtheOS is now supported.
4192
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004193- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4194
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004195- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4196
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004197Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004198-----
4199
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004200- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4201 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4202 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004203
4204Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004205-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004206
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004207- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4208 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4209 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4210 bugs.
4211 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004212 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004213 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4214 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004215 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004216
4217- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004218 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004219
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004220- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4221 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4222
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004223- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4224 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004225 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004226 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4227
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004228- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4229 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4230 use files" uninstall option).
4231
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004232- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4233
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004234- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4235 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4236
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004237- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4238 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4239 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4240
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004241- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4242 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4243 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4244 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4245 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004246 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4247 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4248 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004249
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004250- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004251 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004252 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4253 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4254 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4255 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4256 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4257 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4258 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4259 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4260 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4261 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4262 work around.
4263
4264- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4265 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4266 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4267 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4268 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4269 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4270 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4271 specified with O_CREAT too).
4272
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004273Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004274----
4275
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004276- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004277
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004278- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4279 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4280 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4281
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004282- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4283 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4284 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4285
4286- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4287 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4288 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4289 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4290 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4291 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4292 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4293 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004294
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004295- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4296 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4297 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004298
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004299- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4300 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4301 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4302 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4303 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004304
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004305- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4306 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4307 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004308
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004309- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4310 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004311
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004312- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4313 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4314 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4315 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4316 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004317
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004318- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4319 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4320 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4321
4322- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4323 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4324 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004325
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004326- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4327 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4328 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4329 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004330 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004331
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004332- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4333 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004334
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004335- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4336 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004337
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004338- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004339 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004340 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4341 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004342
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004343
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004344What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004345===============================
4346
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004347*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4348
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004349Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004350--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004351
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004352- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4353 with a custom metaclass.
4354
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004355Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004356-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004357
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004358- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4359 are proxies.
4360
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004361Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004362-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004363
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004364- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4365 very short strings.
4366
4367- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4368 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4369 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4370 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4371 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4372
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004373Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004374-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004375
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004376- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4377 close or delete time).
4378
4379- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4380 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4381
4382- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4383
4384- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004385 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004386
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004387Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004388-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004389
4390Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004391-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004392
4393C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004394-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004395
4396New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004397-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004398
4399Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004400-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004401
4402Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004403-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004404
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004405- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4406
4407- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4408 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4409
4410- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4411 deleted at process exit time.
4412
4413- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4414 in backslash.
4415
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004416Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004417----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004418
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004419- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4420 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4421 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4422
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004423
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004424What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004425===========================
4426
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004427*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4428
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004429Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004430--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004431
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004432- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4433 been extensively updated. See
4434
4435 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4436
4437 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4438
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004439- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4440 deleted!
4441
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004442- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4443 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4444 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4445 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4446 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4447
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004448- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4449
4450 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4451 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4452
4453 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4454 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4455 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4456 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4457 supported anyway.
4458
4459 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4460 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4461
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004462- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4463 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4464 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4465 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4466 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004467
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004468- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4469 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4470 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4471
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004472Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004473-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004474
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004475- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4476 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4477 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4478 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4479 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4480 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004481 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4482 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4483 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4484 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004485
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004486- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4487 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4488 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4489
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004490Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004491-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004492
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004493- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4494
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004495Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004496-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004497
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004498- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4499 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4500 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4501 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4502 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4503 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4504
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004505- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4506
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004507- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4508
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004509- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4510
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004511- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4512 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4513 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4514
4515- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4516
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004517Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004518-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004519
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004520- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4521 off a search on Google.
4522
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004523Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004524-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004525
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004526- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4527 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4528 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4529 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4530 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4531 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4532 other platforms should do likewise.
4533
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004534- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4535 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4536 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4537
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004538C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004539-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004540
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004541- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4542 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4543 producing key-value pairs.
4544
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004545- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004546 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004547 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4548 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4549 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4550 previously went unchallenged.
4551
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004552New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004553-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004554
4555Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004556-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004557
4558Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004559-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004560
4561Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004562----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004563
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004564- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4565 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004566
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004567- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4568 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4569 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4570 home.
4571
4572
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004573What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004574===========================
4575
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004576*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4577
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004578Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004579--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004580
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004581- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4582 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004583
4584 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004585 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004586
4587 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4588 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004589 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004590 This needs to be documented.
4591
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004592- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4593 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4594
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004595- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4596 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4597 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4598
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004599- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4600 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4601
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004602- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4603 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4604 class forbids it).
4605
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004606- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4607 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4608 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4609
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004610- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4611
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004612Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004613-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004614
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004615- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4616 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004617 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004618
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004619- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4620 (like 1 + '').
4621
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004622Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004623-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004624
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004625- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4626 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4627 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4628 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004629 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004630 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4631
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004632- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4633 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4634 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4635 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4636
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004637- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4638 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004639 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4640 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4641 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004642
4643- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4644 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004645
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004646- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4647 bytes on its input.
4648
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004649Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004650-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004651
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004652- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004653 convenience function.
4654
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004655- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4656 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4657 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004658 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4659 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4660 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4661 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4662 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4663 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004664
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004665- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4666 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4667 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4668 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4669
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004670- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4671 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4672 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4673
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004674- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4675 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4676 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4677 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4678
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004679- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4680 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004681 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004682 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4683 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4684 new -l and -e options.
4685
4686- statcache is now deprecated.
4687
4688- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4689 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004690 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004691 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4692 time properly taken into account.
4693
4694- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4695 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4696 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4697 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4698
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004699Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004700-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004701
4702Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004703-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004704
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004705- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4706 is built with libdb3 if available.
4707
4708- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4709
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004710C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004711-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004712
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004713- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4714 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4715 PySequence_Size().
4716
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004717- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4718
4719- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4720 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4721 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4722
4723- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4724 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4725
4726- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4727 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4728
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004729New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004730-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004731
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004732- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4733 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4734
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004735- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4736 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4737
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004738- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4739
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004740Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004741-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004742
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004743- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4744 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4745
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004746Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004747-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004748
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004749Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004750----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004751
4752- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4753 removed completely in the next release.
4754
4755- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4756 OSX.
4757
4758- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4759 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4760
4761- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4762
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004763
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004764What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004765===========================
4766
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004767*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4768
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004769Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004770--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004771
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004772- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004773 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004774 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004775 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4776 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004777 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4778 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004779 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4780 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004781
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004782- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4783 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4784
4785- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4786 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4787
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004788Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004789-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004790
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004791- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4792 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4793 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4794 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4795 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4796 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4797 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4798 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4799
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004800- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4801 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4802 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4803 example).
4804
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004805- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004806 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004807 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004808 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004809
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004810- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4811 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4812 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004813 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004814
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004815- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4816 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4817 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4818 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4819 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4820 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4821
4822 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4823
4824 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4825
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004826Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004827-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004828
4829- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4830
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004831- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4832
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004833- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4834 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004835
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004836- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4837 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4838 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4839 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4840 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4841 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004842 attributes.
4843
4844- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4845 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4846 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004847
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004848- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4849 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4850 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004851
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004852- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4853 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4854 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004855 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4856 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4857
4858- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4859 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004860
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004861Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004862-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004863
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004864- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4865 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4866
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004867- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4868 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4869 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4870 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4871
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004872- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4873 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4874 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4875 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4876
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004877 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4878 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4879 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4880 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4881 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4882 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4883 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4884 without losing information).
4885
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004886- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004887 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4888 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4889 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4890 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4891 module).
4892
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004893 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004894 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4895 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4896 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4897 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004898
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004899- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004900 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4901 encoding.
4902
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004903- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4904 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4905
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004906- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004907 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4908
4909- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4910 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4911 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4912 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4913
4914- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4915
4916- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4917 ON, and OFF.
4918
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004919- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4920 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4921
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004922Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004923-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004924
4925- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4926 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4927 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004928
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004929- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4930 been added: -X and -E.
4931
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004932Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004933-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004934
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004935- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4936 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4937
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004938C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004939-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004940
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004941- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4942 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4943 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4944 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4945 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4946
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004947- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4948 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4949 as long) arguments.
4950
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004951- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4952 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4953 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4954 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4955 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4956 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4957
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004958- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4959 input.
4960
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004961New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004962-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004963
4964Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004965-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004966
4967Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004968-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004969
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004970- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4971 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4972 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4973
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004974- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4975 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4976 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004977 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004978
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004979 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4980 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4981 import signal
4982 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004983
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004984 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004985 while 1:
4986 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004987 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004988 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4989 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4990 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4991 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004992
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004993
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004994What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4995===========================
4996
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004997*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4998
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004999Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005000--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005001
5002- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5003 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5004 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5005
5006- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5007 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5008 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5009 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5010 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5011 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5012 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005013
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005014- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005015 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005016 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5017 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5018 associate a docstring with a property.
5019
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005020- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5021 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5022 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5023 other built-in object types.
5024
5025- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5026 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5027 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5028 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5029 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5030
5031- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5032 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5033
5034- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5035 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005036 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005037 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5038 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5039 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5040 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5041 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5042
5043- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5044 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5045 class.
5046
5047- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5048 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5049 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5050 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5051
5052- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5053 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5054 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5055 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5056
5057- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5058 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5059
5060- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5061 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5062 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5063 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5064 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005065 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005066 with the same value as s.
5067
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005068- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5069
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005070Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005071----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005072
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005073- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5074
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005075- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5076 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5077 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5078 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5079 objects.
5080
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005081- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5082 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005083 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5084 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5085
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005086- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5087 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5088 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5089
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005090Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005091-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005092
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005093- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5094 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5095 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5096 by the instances.
5097
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005098- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5099 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5100 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5101
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005102- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5103 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5104 before the entire comparison is complete.
5105
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005106- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5107 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5108 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5109
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005110- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5111 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5112 getwriter().
5113
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005114- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5115 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5116
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005117- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005118 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5119 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5120
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005121- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5122 iterable object.
5123
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005124- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5125 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005126
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005127- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5128 authentication.
5129
5130- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5131 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005132
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005133- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005134 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5135 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5136 a sample driver.)
5137
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005138Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005139-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005140
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005141- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5142 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5143 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5144 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5145 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5146 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5147 kernel has large file support.
5148
5149- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5150 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5151 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5152 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5153 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5154
5155- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5156 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5157 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5158
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005159C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005160-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005161
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005162- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5163 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5164
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005165New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005166-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005167
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005168- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5169 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5170
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005171Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005172-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005173
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005174- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5175 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5176 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5177 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5178 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5179
5180- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5181 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5182 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5183 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5184
5185- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5186 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5187
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005188Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005189-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005190
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005191- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005192 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5193 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005194
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005195
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005196What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5197===========================
5198
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005199*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5200
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005201Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005202----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005203
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005204- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5205 big to represent as a C double.
5206
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005207- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5208 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5209 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5210 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5211 restriction).
5212
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005213- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5214 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5215 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5216 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5217 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5218
5219 >>> dir([])
5220 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5221 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5222 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5223 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5224 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5225 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5226 'reverse', 'sort']
5227
5228 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5229
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005230- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005231 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5232 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5233 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5234 OverflowError exception.
5235
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005236- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005237 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005238 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5239 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5240 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5241 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5242 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005243 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005244 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5245 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5246
5247 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5248 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5249 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5250 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005251
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005252- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005253 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5254 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5255 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5256 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5257 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5258 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5259 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5260 once it is created.
5261
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005262- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5263 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5264 (key, value) pairs.
5265
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005266- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005267 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5268 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5269
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005270- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5271 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5272 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5273 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5274 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005275
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005276- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005277 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5278 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5279
5280 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5281
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005282- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005283 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5284
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005285Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005286-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005287
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005288- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005289 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5290 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005291
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005292- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5293 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5294 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5295 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5296 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5297 in this area anymore).
5298
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005299- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5300 threading.Timer.
5301
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005302- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5303 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5304
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005305- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005306 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5307
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005308- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005309 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5310 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5311 converted to Python longs.
5312
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005313- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005314 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5315
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005316- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5317 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5318 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5319
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005320Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005321-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005322
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005323- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5324 division operators as per PEP 238.
5325
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005326Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005327-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005328
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005329- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5330 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5331 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5332 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5333
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005334C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005335-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005336
5337- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005338
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005339- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5340 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005341 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005342
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005343 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5344 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005345 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005346 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005347
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005348- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005349 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5350 module:
5351
5352 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005353
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005354 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5355 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005356
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005357 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5358 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005359
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005360 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5361
5362 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5363
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005364- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005365 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5366 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5367 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005368
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005369New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005370-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005371
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005372- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5373 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5374 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5375 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5376 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005377
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005378Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005379-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005380
5381Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005382-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005383
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005384- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5385 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5386 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5387 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005388 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5389 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5390 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5391 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5392 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005393
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005394- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005395 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5396
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005397
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005398What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5399===========================
5400
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005401*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5402
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005403Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005404-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005405
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005406- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5407 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5408
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005409- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5410 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5411 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005412
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005413- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5414 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5415 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5416 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005417
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005418- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5419
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005420- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005421
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005422Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005423-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005424
5425- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005426 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005427 the module docstring for details.
5428
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005429Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005430-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005431
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005432- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005433 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5434 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5435 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005436
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005437- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5438 Nick Mathewson.
5439
5440Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005441----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005442
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005443- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5444 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5445 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5446 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5447 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5448 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5449 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5450 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5451
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005452- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5453 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5454 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5455 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5456
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005457- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5458 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5459 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5460 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5461 come a long way).
5462
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005463- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5464 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5465 write filters for these warnings).
5466
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005467- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5468 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5469 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5470 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5471 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5472
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005473- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5474 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5475 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5476 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5477 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5478 older distribution.
5479
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005480Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005481-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005482
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005483- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5484 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005485 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005486
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005487- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5488 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5489 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5490
5491- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5492
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005493- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5494
5495- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5496
5497- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5498
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005499- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005500
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005501- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5502
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005503New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005504-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005505
5506C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005507-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005508
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005509- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5510 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5511 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5512 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5513 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5514 against buffer overruns.
5515
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005516- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005517 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5518 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005519 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5520 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5521 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5522
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005523- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5524 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5525 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5526 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5527 deprecated.
5528
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005529Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005530-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005531
5532- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5533 relevant is found.
5534
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005535
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005536What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005537===========================
5538
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005539*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5540
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005541Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005542----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005543
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005544- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5545 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5546 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5547 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5548 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5549 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5550 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5551 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005552 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005553 repaired.
5554
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005555- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005556 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005557 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5558 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5559 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5560 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5561 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5562 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5563 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5564 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5565
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005566- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5567 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5568 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5569 leading BMO character).
5570
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005571- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5572 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5573 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5574
5575 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5576 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5577 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005578
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005579 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5580 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5581 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5582 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5583 for various simple to use conversions.
5584
5585 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5586 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5587
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005588 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5589 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5590 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5591 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5592 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5593 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5594 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5595 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5596 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5597 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5598 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5599 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5600 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5601 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5602 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005603
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005604- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5605 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5606 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005607 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005608 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005609
5610 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005611 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5612 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5613 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5614 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5615 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005616 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5617 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005618
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005619 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5620 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5621 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005622 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005623
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005624- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5625 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5626 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5627 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5628 floating arithmetic,
5629
5630 x = 9007199254740992.0
5631 print long(x)
5632
5633 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5634 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5635 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5636 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5637 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5638 functions are of good quality).
5639
5640 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5641 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5642 algorithms to break.
5643
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005644- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5645 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5646 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5647 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5648 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5649 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5650 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5651 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5652 order.
5653
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005654- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5655 operation along the most common code paths.
5656
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005657- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5658 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5659
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005660- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5661 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5662 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5663 {}.update(UserDict())
5664
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005665- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5666 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5667 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5668 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5669 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5670 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5671 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5672 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5673
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005674- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005675 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005676
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005677 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005678 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5679 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005680 join() method of strings
5681 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005682 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5683 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005684 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005685 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005686
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005687- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5688 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5689
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005690- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5691 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5692
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005693- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5694 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5695 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5696 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5697
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005698- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5699 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005700 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005701 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5702 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005703
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005704- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5705
5706
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005707Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005708-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005709
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005710- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005711 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005712 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5713 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5714
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005715- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5716 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5717
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005718- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5719 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5720 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5721 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5722
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005723- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5724 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5725 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5726
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005727- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5728
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005729- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5730
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005731- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5732 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5733 that are still imported into string.py).
5734
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005735- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5736
5737- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5738 Now it does.
5739
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005740- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5741
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005742- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5743 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5744 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5745 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5746 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005747 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5748 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005749
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005750- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5751 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5752 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5753 'help(object)'.
5754
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005755Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005756-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005757
5758- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005759 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005760 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5761 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5762
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005763- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005764 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5765 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005766
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005767C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005768-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005769
5770- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5771 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005772
5773----
5774
5775**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**