blob: 2ef34245739b94eeb256c505d0200ef9783e7047 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Martin v. Löwis18e16552006-02-15 17:27:45 +000015- PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type.
16
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000017- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
18 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
19 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
20
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000021- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
22 configure would break checking curses.h.
23
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000024- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
25 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
26
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000027- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
28
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000029- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
30
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000031- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
32
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000033- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
34 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
35
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000036- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
37 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
38 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
39
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000040- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
41 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000042 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000043
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000044- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
45 now encodes backslash correctly.
46
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000047- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
48
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000049- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
50 and long longs.
51
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000052- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
53 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
54 message in this case.
55
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000056- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
57 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
58 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
59 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
60 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
61
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000062- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000063
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000064- Speed up some Unicode operations.
65
66- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
67
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000068- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000069 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
70
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000071- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
72
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000073- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
74 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
75
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000076- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
77
78- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
79
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000080- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
81 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
82 was empty.
83
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000084- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
85 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
86
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000087- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000088 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000089
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000090- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
91 codes.
92
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000093- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
94 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
95 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
96
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000097- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
98 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
99
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +0000100- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +0000101 (fixes bug #1119418).
102
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000103- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
104
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000105- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
106 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
107
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000108- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
109 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
110 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
111
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000112- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
113
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000114- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
115 reference counts in some error exit cases.
116
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000117- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
118 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
119 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
120 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
121 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
122 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
123 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
124 realloc.
125
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000126- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
127 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
128
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000129- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
130 like their int counterparts.
131
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000132- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
133 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
134 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
135 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
136 for a longer write-up of the problem).
137
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000138- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
139 serializing floats.
140
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000141- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
142 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
143 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
144
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000145- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
146 278.
147
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000148- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
149 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
150 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
151 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000152 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000153 PyNumber_*().
154 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
155
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000156- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
157 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
158 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
159 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
160
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000161- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
162 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
163 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
164 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
165 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
166
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000167- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
168 disabled caused a crash.
169
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000170- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
171 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
172
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000173- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000174 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
175
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000176- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
177
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000178- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000179 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
180 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
181 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000182
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000183- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
184
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000185- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
186 returning None.
187
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000188- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000189 ('\') with a specific error message.
190
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000191- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
192
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000193- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
194 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
195
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000196- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000197 an ferror() call.
198
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000199- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
200 list.sort().
201
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000202- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
203 (2+3) --> (5).
204
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000205- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
206
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000207- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
208 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000209
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000210- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
211 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
212 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
213
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000214- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
215 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
216 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
217
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000218Extension Modules
219-----------------
220
Georg Brandlf4f44152006-02-18 22:29:33 +0000221- Patch #1393157: os.startfile() now has an optional argument to specify
222 a "command verb" to invoke on the file.
223
Neal Norwitz082b2df2006-02-07 07:04:46 +0000224- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
225 is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
226
Neal Norwitz0e6bc8c2006-02-05 05:45:43 +0000227- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
228 mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
229 mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
230
Martin v. Löwis57a34e82006-02-04 19:12:37 +0000231- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
232 than the system default domain.
233
Martin v. Löwis14694662006-02-03 12:54:16 +0000234- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
235 are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
236 WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
237
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000238- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
239
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000240- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
241 before the env.
242
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000243- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
244
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000245- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
246
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000247- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
248 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
249 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
250
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000251- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
252 without prior setting of the userptr.
253
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000254- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
255
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000256- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
257
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000258- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
259 problem on AIX.
260
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000261- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
262
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000263- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
264
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000265- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
266
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000267- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
268 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
269
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000270- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
271 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
272
273- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
274
275- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000276
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000277- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
278 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
279
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000280- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
281
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000282- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
283 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
284
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000285- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
286 returns in cStringIO.c.
287
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000288- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
289 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
290
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000291- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
292
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000293- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
294
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000295- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
296 the file system encoding.
297
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000298- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
299 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000300
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000301- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
302
303- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000304 line without newlines.
305
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000306- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
307 on Windows.
308
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000309- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000310 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
311
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000312- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
313 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
314 for large or negative values.
315
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000316- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000317 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000318
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000319- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
320
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000321- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
322 if available on the platform.
323
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000324- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
325 available on the platform.
326
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000327- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
328 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
329
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000330- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
331
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000332- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
333 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
334 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
335
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000336- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
337
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000338- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
339 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
340
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000341- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000342 file size.
343
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000344- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
345
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000346- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
347 {remove_history,replace_history}
348
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000349- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
350 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000351
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000352- stat_float_times is now True.
353
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000354- array.array objects are now picklable.
355
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000356- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
357 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
358
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000359- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
360 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
361 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
362
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000363- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
364 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000365
366Library
367-------
368
Georg Brandl67e9fb92006-02-19 13:56:17 +0000369- Patch #1215184: fileinput now has a fileno() function for getting the
370 current file number.
371
Georg Brandl602b9ba2006-02-19 13:26:36 +0000372- Patch #1349274: gettext.install() now optionally installs additional
373 translation functions other than _() in the builtin namespace.
374
Georg Brandle4662172006-02-19 09:51:27 +0000375- Patch #1337756: fileinput now accepts Unicode filenames.
376
Georg Brandl7b4e7c22006-02-18 21:10:56 +0000377- Patch #1373643: The chunk module can now read chunks larger than
378 two gigabytes.
379
Georg Brandl21dd1af2006-02-17 13:35:13 +0000380- Patch #1417555: SimpleHTTPServer now returns Last-Modified headers.
381
Georg Brandlbd3bc4d2006-02-17 09:52:53 +0000382- Bug #1430298: It is now possible to send a mail with an empty
383 return address using smtplib.
384
Georg Brandl0e1abe22006-02-17 09:48:14 +0000385- Bug #1432260: The names of lambda functions are now properly displayed
386 in pydoc.
Georg Brandl501dd0d2006-02-17 09:45:40 +0000387
Martin v. Löwis00756902006-02-05 17:09:41 +0000388- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
389 unless the system is Win32.
390
Martin v. Löwisc81e3a62006-01-30 15:04:31 +0000391- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000392 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
393 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
394
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000395- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
396
397- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000398
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000399- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
400
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000401- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000402 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000403
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000404- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
405 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000406
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000407- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
408
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000409- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
410
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000411- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
412 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
413 LoadError subclasses IOError.
414
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000415- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000416 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
417 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
418 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
419 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
420
421 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
422 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
423 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
424 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
425 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000426
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000427- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
428 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
429 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
430
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000431- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
432
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000433- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
434
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000435- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
436 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
437 illegal argument)
438
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000439- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
440 is an error in the format string.
441
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000442- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
443
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000444- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000445 "parent" argument.
446
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000447- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
448 for padding.
449
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000450- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
451 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
452
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000453- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
454 to get the correct encoding.
455
456- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
457 languages.
458
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000459- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
460
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000461- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
462
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000463- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
464
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000465- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
466 functionality.
467
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000468- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
469
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000470- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
471 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
472
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000473- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
474 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
475 match the Content-Length header.
476
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000477- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
478
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000479- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
480 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000481 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000482
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000483- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
484
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000485- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
486
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000487- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
488 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
489
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000490- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
491 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
492 Tkdnd.
493
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000494- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
495 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
496
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000497- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
498 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
499
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000500- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000501 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
502
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000503- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
504 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
505
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000506- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
507 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
508
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000509- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000510 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000511
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000512- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
513
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000514- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
515 error messages.
516
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000517- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
518
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000519- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
520 Bug #1224621.
521
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000522- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
523 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
524 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
525 terminates by raising StopIteration.
526
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000527- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
528
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000529- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
530 component of the path.
531
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000532- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
533 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
534 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
535 class at all.
536
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000537- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
538 files to PyPI.
539
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000540- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
541 them to PyPI.
542
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000543- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
544 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
545 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
546 work as expected.
547
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000548- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
549 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
550
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000551- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000552 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
553
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000554- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
555
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000556- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
557 to build.
558
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000559- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
560 symbolic links on Windows.
561
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000562- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000563 profile.py if available.
564
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000565- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
566
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000567- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
568 in LWPCookieJar.
569
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000570- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
571
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000572- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
573
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000574- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
575
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000576- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
577
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000578- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
579
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000580- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
581
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000582- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
583
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000584- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
585
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000586- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
587 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
588 be exploited in various ways.
589
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000590- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000591 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
592
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000593- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
594 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
595
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000596- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000597 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
598
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000599- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
600
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000601- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
602
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000603- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
604
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000605- Enhancements to the csv module:
606
607 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000608 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000609 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000610 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
611 reporting.
612 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
613 dictates.
614 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000615 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000616 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000617 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
618 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000619 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
620 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000621 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000622 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
623 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
624 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
625 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
626 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
627 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
628 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
629 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
630 without first creating a dialect class.
631 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
632 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
633 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000634 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000635 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
636 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000637 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
638 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
639 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
640 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000641 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
642 This has been fixed.
643
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000644- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
645 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
646 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
647 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
648
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000649- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
650
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000651- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
652 (Bug #951915).
653
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000654- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
655 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
656 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000657 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000658
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000659- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
660
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000661- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
662 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
663
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000664- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
665
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000666- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
667
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000668- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
669
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000670- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
671
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000672- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
673
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000674- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
675 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
676 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
677
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000678- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000679 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000680
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000681- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
682 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
683 tokenizer with very long source lines.
684
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000685- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
686 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
687 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000688
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000689- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
690 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000691
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000692- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
693 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
694
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000695- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
696 correctly.
697
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000698- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
699 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
700 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
701 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
702 between two lines.
703
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000704- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
705 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
706 handlers.
707
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000708- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000709 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
710 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000711
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000712- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
713 considering it exactly like a '*'.
714
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000715- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
716 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000717
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000718- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
719
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000720- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
721 touch the recursion limit.
722
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000723Build
724-----
725
Martin v. Löwis86d66262006-02-17 08:40:11 +0000726- Patch #1432345: Make python compile on DragonFly.
727
Martin v. Löwis856bf9a2006-02-14 20:42:55 +0000728- Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added.
729
Martin v. Löwisa55e55e2006-02-11 15:55:14 +0000730- Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library.
731
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000732- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
733
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000734- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
735 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
736
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000737- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
738
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000739- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
740 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
741
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000742- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
743 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
744
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000745- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
746 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
747 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000748 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000749
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000750- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
751 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
752 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
753
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000754- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
755
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000756- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
757 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
758
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000759- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
760 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
761 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
762 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
763 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
764 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
765 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
766 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
767
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000768- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
769 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
770 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
771 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
772
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000773C API
774-----
775
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000776- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
777
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000778- Removed PyRange_New().
779
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000780- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
781 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
782 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
783 mappings.
784
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000785
786Tests
787-----
788
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000789- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000790
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000791- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
792 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
793
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000794
795Documentation
796-------------
797
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000798- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
799
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000800- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
801 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
802
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000803- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
804
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000805- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
806
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000807- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
808
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000809- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
810
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000811- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
812
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000813- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
814
815- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
816
817- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
818
819- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
820
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000821- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
822 Closes bug #1166582.
823
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000824- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
825 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
826 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
827
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000828Mac
829---
830
831
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000832New platforms
833-------------
834
835- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
836
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000837
838Tools/Demos
839-----------
840
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000841- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
842 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
843 source files that need an encoding declaration.
844 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
845
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000846- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
847
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000848- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000849
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000850- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
851 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000852
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000853What's New in Python 2.4 final?
854===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000855
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000856*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000857
858Core and builtins
859-----------------
860
861- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
862 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
863 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
864
865
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000866What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
867==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000868
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000869*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000870
871Core and builtins
872-----------------
873
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000874- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
875 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
876 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
877
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000878
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000879Library
880-------
881
882- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
883 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
884 raised is re-raised.
885
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000886- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
887 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
888
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000889- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
890 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
891 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
892 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
893 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
894 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
895 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
896 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
897 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
898 by the slice are recomputed now.
899
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000900- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000901
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000902Build
903-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000904
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000905- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
906 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
907 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000908
909C API
910-----
911
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000912- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
913
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000914
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000915What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
916================================
917
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000918*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000919
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000920License
921-------
922
923The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
924is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
925changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
926Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
927intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
928durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
929the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
930License::
931
932 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
933
934says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
935to Python 2.1.1.
936
937The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
938License Version 2.
939
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000940Core and builtins
941-----------------
942
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000943- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
944 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
945 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
946 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
947 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
948 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
949 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000950 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000951 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
952 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
953
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000954- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000955
956Extension Modules
957-----------------
958
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000959- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
960 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
961 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
962 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000963
964Library
965-------
966
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000967- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
968 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
969 returned.
970
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000971- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
972
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000973- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
974 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
975
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000976- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
977
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000978- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
979 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000980
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000981- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
982
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000983- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
984
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000985- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000986 the source code is updated and reloaded.
987
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000988Build
989-----
990
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000991- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000992
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000993What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
994================================
995
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000996*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000997
998Core and builtins
999-----------------
1000
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001001- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +00001002 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
1003
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +00001004- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
1005 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
1006 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
1007 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
1008
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001009- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
1010 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
1011
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +00001012- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
1013 constant.
1014
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001015- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
1016 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
1017 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
1018 large), and to anomalies such as
1019 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
1020 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
1021 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
1022 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001023
1024Extension modules
1025-----------------
1026
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +00001027- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
1028 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001029 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
1030 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
1031 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001032
1033Library
1034-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001035
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001036- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001037 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001038 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
1039 --swig-cpp.
1040
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +00001041- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
1042 it is set.
1043
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +00001044- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +00001045
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +00001046- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1047 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1048 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1049 Closes bug #1039270.
1050
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001051- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001052
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001053 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001054 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1055 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1056 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1057 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1058 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1059 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1060 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1061 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1062 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1063 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1064 + Updates to documentation.
1065
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001066- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1067 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1068 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1069 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1070
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001071- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001072
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001073- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1074 applications should use the getmember function.
1075
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001076- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1077
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001078- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1079 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1080 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1081 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1082 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1083 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1084 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1085 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1086 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1087
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001088- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1089 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001090 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001091
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001092- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1093 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1094 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1095 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1096 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1097 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1098 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1099 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001100
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001101- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1102 the new public features (of which there are many).
1103
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001104- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001105 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1106 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1107 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1108 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001109 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001110
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001111- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1112
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001113- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1114 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1115 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1116 options.
1117
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001118- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1119 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1120 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1121 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1122 conditions under which non-string values work.
1123
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001124Build
1125-----
1126
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001127- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1128 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1129 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1130
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001131- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1132 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1133 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1134 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1135 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001136
1137C API
1138-----
1139
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001140- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1141 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1142
1143- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1144
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001145- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1146 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1147 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1148 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1149 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1150 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1151 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1152 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1153 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1154
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001155- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1156
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001157- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1158 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1159 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001160
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001161Tests
1162-----
1163
1164- test__locale ported to unittest
1165
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001166Mac
1167---
1168
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001169- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1170 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1171 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001172
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001173Tools/Demos
1174-----------
1175
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001176- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1177 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1178 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1179 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1180 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001181
1182
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001183What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1184=================================
1185
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001186*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001187
1188Core and builtins
1189-----------------
1190
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001191- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001192 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1193
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001194- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1195 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1196 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1197 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1198 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1199 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1200 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1201 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001202 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1203 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1204 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1205 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1206 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001207
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001208- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1209 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1210 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1211 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1212 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1213
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001214- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1215
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001216- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1217 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1218
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001219- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1220 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1221 modified the list.
1222
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001223- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1224 functions is now writable.
1225
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001226- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1227 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1228 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1229 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1230
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001231- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1232 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1233 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1234 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1235 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001236
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001237- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1238 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1239
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001240Extension modules
1241-----------------
1242
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001243- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1244
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001245- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1246 data.
1247
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001248- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1249 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1250 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1251 supposed to have been truncated away.
1252
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001253- Added socket.socketpair().
1254
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001255- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1256 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1257
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001258- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001259 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1260
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001261Library
1262-------
1263
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001264- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001265 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001266
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001267- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1268 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1269
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001270- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1271 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1272
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001273- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1274
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001275- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1276 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001277
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001278- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1279 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1280
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001281- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1282
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001283- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1284
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001285- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1286
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001287- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1288 Percivall.
1289
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001290- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1291 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1292
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001293- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1294 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1295 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001296 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001297
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001298- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1299 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1300 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1301 and exponent.
1302
1303- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1304
1305- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001306 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001307 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1308
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001309- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1310 to the readline module.
1311
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001312- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001313 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1314 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001315
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001316- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1317 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1318 contains symlinks.
1319
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001320- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1321 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1322
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001323- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1324 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1325 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1326
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001327- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1328 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1329 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1330 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1331 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1332 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1333 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1334 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1335 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1336 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1337 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1338 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1339 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1340
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001341- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1342
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001343Tools/Demos
1344-----------
1345
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001346- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1347 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1348
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001349- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1350
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001351Build
1352-----
1353
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001354- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1355 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1356 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1357 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1358 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1359 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1360 plans to do so.
1361
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001362- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1363 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1364
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001365- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1366 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1367
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001368- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1369 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1370
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001371- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1372 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1373
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001374- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1375 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1376
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001377C API
1378-----
1379
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001380..
1381
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001382Documentation
1383-------------
1384
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001385- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1386 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1387
1388- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1389 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1390 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001391
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001392New platforms
1393-------------
1394
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001395- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1396
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001397Tests
1398-----
1399
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001400..
1401
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001402Windows
1403-------
1404
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001405- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1406 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1407 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1408 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1409 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1410 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1411 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1412 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1413 the problem.
1414
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001415Mac
1416---
1417
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001418..
1419
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001420
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001421What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1422=================================
1423
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001424*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001425
1426Core and builtins
1427-----------------
1428
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001429- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1430 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1431 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1432 sensitive code.
1433
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001434- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001435 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001436
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001437 @staticmethod
1438 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001439
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001440 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001441
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001442- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1443 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1444 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1445 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1446 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1447 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1448 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1449 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1450 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1451 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1452 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1453
1454 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1455 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1456 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1457 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1458 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1459 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1460 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1461
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001462- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1463 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1464
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001465- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001466 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001467
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001468- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001469 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001470 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1471
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001472- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001473 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1474 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1475
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001476- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1477 types that support garbage collection.
1478
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001479- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1480
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001481- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1482 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1483 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1484 Jython.
1485
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001486- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1487
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001488- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1489 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1490
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001491- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1492 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1493 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001494
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001495- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1496 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1497 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1498
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001499Extension modules
1500-----------------
1501
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001502- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1503
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001504Library
1505-------
1506
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001507- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1508 TIS-620
1509
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001510- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1511 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1512 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1513 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1514 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1515 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1516 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1517 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1518 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1519 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1520
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001521- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1522
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001523- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1524 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1525 same as when the argument is omitted).
1526 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1527
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001528- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1529
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001530- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1531 schemes are offered.
1532
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001533- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1534
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001535- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1536 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1537 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1538
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001539- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1540
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001541- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1542 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1543
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001544- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1545 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1546 when dummy_threading is being used.
1547
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001548- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1549 from a tarfile.
1550
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001551- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001552 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001553
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001554- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1555 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1556 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1557 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1558
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001559- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1560 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1561
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001562- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1563 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1564 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1565 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1566 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1567 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1568 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1569 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1570 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1571 by some other method in progress).
1572
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001573- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1574 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1575 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001576
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001577- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1578
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001579- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1580 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1581 AM Kuchling.
1582
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001583- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1584 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1585 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1586
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001587- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1588 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1589 instead of unsigned.
1590
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001591- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001592 no longer part of the public API.
1593
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001594- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1595 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1596 string methods of the same name).
1597
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001598- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001599 SF patch 945642.
1600
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001601- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1602
1603 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1604
1605 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1606 DocTestSuites.
1607
1608- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1609 that provide thread-local data.
1610
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001611- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1612 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1613
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001614- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1615
1616- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1617 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1618 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1619
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001620- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1621
1622 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1623 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1624 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001625
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001626 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1627 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1628 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1629 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1630
1631 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1632 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1633
1634 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1635 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1636 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1637 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1638
1639 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1640 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1641 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1642 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1643 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1644
1645 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1646 wrapping help output.
1647
1648 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1649 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1650 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001651
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001652C API
1653-----
1654
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001655- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1656 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1657 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1658 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1659 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1660 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1661 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1662 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1663 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1664 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1665 its visible semantics have not changed.
1666
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001667- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1668 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1669
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001670Documentation
1671-------------
1672
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001673- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001674
1675 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001676 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001677
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001678 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001679
1680 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1681
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001682- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001683
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001684Tests
1685-----
1686
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001687- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001688 platforms that use the Makefile.
1689
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001690- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1691 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1692 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1693
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001694
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001695What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1696=================================
1697
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001698*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001699
1700Core and builtins
1701-----------------
1702
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001703- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1704 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1705 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1706 objects now (one object instead of three).
1707
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001708- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1709 Windows DLLs.
1710
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001711- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1712 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001713
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001714- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1715 a new .pyc magic.
1716
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001717- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1718 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1719 be there.
1720
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001721- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1722 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1723 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1724
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001725- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1726 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1727 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1728
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001729- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1730
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001731- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1732 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1733 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001734
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001735- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1736 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1737
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001738- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1739
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001740- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001741 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001742
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001743- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1744
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001745- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1746
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001747- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1748 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1749
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001750- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1751 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1752 Fixes bug #858016 .
1753
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001754- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1755 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1756 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1757
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001758- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1759 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1760 improves their performance (about 35%).
1761
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001762- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1763 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1764 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1765
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001766- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1767 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1768 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1769 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1770
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001771- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1772 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001773 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001774 length is not known).
1775
1776- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1777 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001778 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1779 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001780 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1781
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001782- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1783 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1784
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001785- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1786 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1787 keyword arguments.
1788
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001789- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1790 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1791 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1792
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001793- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1794 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1795 cases.
1796
1797- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1798 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1799 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1800 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1801 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1802 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1803 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1804 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1805 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1806 a release build.
1807
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001808- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1809 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1810
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001811- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001812 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001813
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001814- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1815 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1816 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1817 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1818 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1819 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1820 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1821 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1822 destroyed.
1823
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001824- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1825 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1826 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1827 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1828 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1829 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1830 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1831 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1832
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001833- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1834 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1835 character other than a space.
1836
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001837- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1838 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1839 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1840 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1841 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1842 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1843 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1844 attributes with the same name.
1845
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001846- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1847 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1848 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1849 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1850 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1851 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1852 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1853 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1854 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1855 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1856 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1857 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1858 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1859 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001860
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001861- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1862 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1863 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1864 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1865 This has been repaired.
1866
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001867- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1868
1869- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1870
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001871- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1872 over a sequence.
1873
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001874- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001875 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001876
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001877- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1878
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001879- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1880 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1881 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1882 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1883 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1884 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1885 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1886 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1887
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001888- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1889 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1890 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1891
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001892- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1893 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1894 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1895 freelist.
1896
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001897- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1898 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1899
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001900- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1901 number.
1902
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001903- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1904 a TypeError exception.
1905
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001906- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1907 820195.
1908
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001909- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1910 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1911 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1912
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001913- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001914 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1915 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001916
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001917- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1918 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1919 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1920
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001921- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1922 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001923 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001924
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001925- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001926 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1927 the first call.
1928
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001929
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001930Extension modules
1931-----------------
1932
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001933- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1934 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1935
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001936- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1937 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1938 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1939 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1940 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1941 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1942 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001943
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001944- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1945
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001946- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1947
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001948- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1949 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1950
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001951- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1952 fewer false positives.
1953
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001954- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1955 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1956
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001957- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001958 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1959
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001960- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001961 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001962 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001963 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1964 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001965
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001966- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1967 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1968 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1969 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1970
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001971- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1972 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1973 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1974 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1975 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1976 #897625.
1977
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001978- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1979 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1980
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001981- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1982 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1983 and pops on either side of the deque.
1984
1985- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1986 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1987
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001988- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1989 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1990 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1991 other functions that expect a function argument.
1992
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001993- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1994
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001995- os.getsid was added.
1996
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001997- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1998 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1999 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
2000
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00002001- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
2002
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00002003- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
2004
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00002005- readline.clear_history was added.
2006
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00002007- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
2008
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00002009- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
2010
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00002011- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
2012
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00002013- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
2014
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00002015- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
2016
2017- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
2018
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00002019- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
2020
2021- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
2022
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002023- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
2024 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
2025 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
2026
2027- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
2028 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
2029 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
2030 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
2031 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
2032 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
2033 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
2034
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00002035- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
2036 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
2037 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
2038 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002039
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002040- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002041 iterators from a single iterable.
2042
2043- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
2044 of raising a TypeError exception.
2045
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00002046- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2047 as parameter.
2048
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002049Library
2050-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002051
Armin Rigoa871ef22006-02-08 12:53:56 +00002052- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
2053 profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
2054 profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
2055 Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
2056
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002057- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2058
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002059- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2060 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2061 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002062
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002063- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2064 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2065 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002066
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002067- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002068
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002069- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2070 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002071
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002072- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2073 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2074
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002075- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2076
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002077- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002078 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002079
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002080- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002081 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002082
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002083- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2084
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002085- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2086 on cygwin and mingw32.
2087
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002088- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2089
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002090- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2091 module.
2092
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002093- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2094 installation scheme for all platforms.
2095
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002096- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002097 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002098
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002099- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2100 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2101 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2102
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002103- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2104 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2105 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2106
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002107- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2108
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002109- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2110
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002111- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2112 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2113
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002114- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2115 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2116 type pattern with the same value exists.
2117
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002118- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2119 when run from the command prompt).
2120
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002121- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2122 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2123
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002124- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2125 default sort).
2126
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002127- Added global runctx function to profile module
2128
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002129- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2130
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002131- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2132
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002133- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2134
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002135- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002136 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2137 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2138 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2139 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2140 accordingly.
2141
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002142- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2143 decoding standards.
2144
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002145- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2146 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2147 called for all requests.
2148
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002149- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2150 they are passed to the compiler.
2151
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002152- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2153 indent, width and depth.
2154
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002155- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2156 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2157
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002158- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2159 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2160
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002161- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2162
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002163- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2164
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002165- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2166
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002167- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2168 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2169
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002170- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002171 for better performance.
2172
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002173- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002174
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002175- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2176 a string).
2177
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002178- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2179
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002180- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2181
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002182- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2183
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002184- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2185
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002186- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2187 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2188 list of fieldnames.
2189
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002190- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2191 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2192
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002193- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2194
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002195- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2196 empty lists.
2197
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002198- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2199 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2200 and shelves.
2201
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002202- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2203 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2204
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002205- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002206 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2207 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002208
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002209- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2210 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002211 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002212
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002213- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002214 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2215 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2216
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002217- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2218 and removed in Py2.4.
2219
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002220- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2221
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002222- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2223
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002224Tools/Demos
2225-----------
2226
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002227- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2228 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2229
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002230- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2231
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002232- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2233 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2234 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2235 destination in situations where both files are given.
2236
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002237- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2238 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2239 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2240 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2241
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002242- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2243
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002244- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2245 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2246 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2247 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2248 now.
2249
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002250- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2251 in effect
2252
2253- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2254 C-c C-h
2255
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002256- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2257 -d option was given.
2258
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002259Build
2260-----
2261
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002262- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2263 build under OS X.
2264
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002265- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2266 --enable-profiling.
2267
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002268- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2269 is configured --with-tsc.
2270
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002271- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2272 on AMD64.
2273
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002274- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2275 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2276
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002277- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2278 removed.
2279
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002280- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2281 supported (see PEP 11).
2282
2283- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2284
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002285- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2286
2287- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2288 (see PEP 11).
2289
2290- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2291 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2292
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002293C API
2294-----
2295
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002296- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2297 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2298 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2299
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002300- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2301 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2302 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2303 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2304
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002305- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2306 generator objects.
2307
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002308- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2309 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002310 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2311 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002312
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002313- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2314 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2315
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002316- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2317 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2318 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2319 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2320 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2321
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002322- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2323 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2324 about 10% faster.
2325
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002326- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2327 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2328
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002329- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2330 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2331 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2332 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2333
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002334Windows
2335-------
2336
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002337- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2338 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2339 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2340 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2341
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002342- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2343 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2344 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2345
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002346
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002347What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2348===============================
2349
2350*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2351
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002352IDLE
2353----
2354
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002355- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2356 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2357 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2358 context-menu actions.
2359
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002360- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2361 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2362 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2363 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2364 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2365 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2366 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2367 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2368 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2369
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002370
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002371What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2372=============================================
2373
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002374*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002375
2376Core and builtins
2377-----------------
2378
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002379- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002380 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002381 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2382
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002383Extension modules
2384-----------------
2385
2386- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2387 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2388 than once. This has been fixed.
2389
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002390- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2391 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2392 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2393 call.
2394
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002395- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2396
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002397Library
2398-------
2399
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002400- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2401 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2402
2403- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2404 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2405 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2406 restored.
2407
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002408IDLE
2409----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002410
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002411- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002412
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002413Build
2414-----
2415
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002416- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2417 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2418
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002419C API
2420-----
2421
2422Windows
2423-------
2424
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002425- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2426 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2427
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002428- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2429
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002430Mac
2431---
2432
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002433- Various fixes to pimp.
2434
2435- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2436
2437- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2438 more problems than it solves.
2439
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002440
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002441What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2442=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002443
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002444*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2445
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002446Core and builtins
2447-----------------
2448
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002449- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2450 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2451
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002452- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2453 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002454 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002455
2456- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2457 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2458 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002459 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002460
2461- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2462 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002463
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002464- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2465 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2466 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2467
2468- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002469 770247.
2470
2471- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002472
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002473Extension modules
2474-----------------
2475
2476- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2477 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2478
2479- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2480
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002481- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2482
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002483- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2484 contained within the _strptime module.
2485
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002486- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2487 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2488
2489- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002490 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2491
2492- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2493 the find_class attribute, if present.
2494
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002495- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002496
2497 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2498 (SF bug 763298).
2499
2500 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002501 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2502 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2503 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002504
2505 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2506
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002507Library
2508-------
2509
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002510- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2511
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002512- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2513 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2514 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2515 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2516 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2517 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2518 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2519 or Tester().
2520
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002521- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2522 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2523 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2524 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2525 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2526 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2527 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2528 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2529 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002530
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002531 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002532
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002533- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2534 weren't before was an oversight.
2535
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002536- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2537 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2538
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002539- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2540 when there are no lines.
2541
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002542- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2543 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2544
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002545- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2546 to child processes.
2547
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002548- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2549
2550- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2551
2552- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2553 xmlrpclib.
2554
2555- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2556 responses.
2557
2558- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2559 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2560
2561- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2562 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2563 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2564
2565- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2566 used as patterns.
2567
2568- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2569 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2570 than Tk 8.3.
2571
2572- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2573
2574- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002575
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002576Tools/Demos
2577-----------
2578
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002579- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2580
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002581- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2582
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002583- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002584
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002585Build
2586-----
2587
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002588- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2589
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002590- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2591
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002592- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2593 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002594
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002595- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2596 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2597 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002598
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002599C API
2600-----
2601
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002602- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2603 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2604
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002605Windows
2606-------
2607
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002608- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2609 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2610 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2611 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2612 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2613 Python exception ::
2614
2615 thread.error: can't start new thread
2616
2617 is raised now.
2618
2619- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2620 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2621 instead of from DLL teardown.
2622
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002623Mac
2624---
2625
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002626- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002627 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002628 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2629 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2630 the executable in the bundle.
2631
2632- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002633
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002634- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2635
2636- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2637 on Panther.
2638
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002639What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2640================================
2641
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002642*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002643
2644Core and builtins
2645-----------------
2646
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002647- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2648 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2649 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2650 with the -i option.
2651
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002652- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2653 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2654
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002655- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2656 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2657
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002658- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2659 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2660 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2661 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2662 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2663 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2664 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2665 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2666 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2667 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2668 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2669 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2670 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002671
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002672- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2673 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2674 embedded in a lambda expression.
2675
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002676- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2677 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2678 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2679 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2680 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2681
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002682- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2683 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2684 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2685
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002686- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2687 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2688
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002689- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2690 It's writable again.
2691
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002692- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2693 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2694 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002695 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002696
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002697- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2698 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2699 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2700
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002701Extension modules
2702-----------------
2703
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002704- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2705 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2706
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002707- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2708 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2709 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2710 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2711
2712- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2713 collection.
2714
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002715- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2716 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2717 unique within a single program run.
2718
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002719- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2720 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2721
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002722- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2723 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2724
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002725- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2726 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002727
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002728- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2729
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002730- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2731 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2732
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002733- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2734 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2735 for many BSD-derived systems.
2736
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002737
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002738Library
2739-------
2740
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002741- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2742 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2743 primary ones:
2744
2745 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2746 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2747 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2748
2749 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2750 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2751 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2752 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2753 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2754 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2755
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002756- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2757 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2758 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2759 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2760 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2761 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2762 argument.
2763
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002764- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2765 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2766 in the archive.
2767
2768- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2769 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2770
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002771- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2772 569574).
2773
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002774- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2775 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2776 no more.
2777
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002778- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2779 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2780 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2781 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2782 code coverage.
2783
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002784- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2785 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2786 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002787 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2788 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002789
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002790- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2791 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2792 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002793 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002794
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002795- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2796
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002797- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2798 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2799 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2800 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2801
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002802- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2803 handling.
2804
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002805- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2806 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2807
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002808- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2809 in socket.py.
2810
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002811- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2812
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002813- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2814 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2815 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2816 opener with proxy support.
2817
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002818- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2819
2820- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2821
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002822Tools/Demos
2823-----------
2824
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002825- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2826
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002827- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2828
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002829- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2830 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002831
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002832- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2833 files.
2834
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002835Build
2836-----
2837
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002838- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002839 different root directory.
2840
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002841C API
2842-----
2843
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002844- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2845 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2846 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2847 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2848 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2849 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2850 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2851 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2852 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2853 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2854
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002855- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2856 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2857 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2858 from Python.
2859
2860
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002861New platforms
2862-------------
2863
2864None this time.
2865
2866Tests
2867-----
2868
2869- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2870 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2871
2872Windows
2873-------
2874
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002875- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2876
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002877- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2878 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2879 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2880 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2881 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2882 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2883 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2884 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2885 that's what it's for.
2886
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002887Mac
2888---
2889
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002890- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2891 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2892 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2893 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002894- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2895 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2896- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002897
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002898SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2899------------------------------------
2900
2901430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2902598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2903622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2904661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2905683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2906697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2907713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2908724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2909727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2910729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2911730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2912731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2913732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2914733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2915735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2916740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2917744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2918745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2919747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2920749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2921751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2922753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2923755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2924757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2925760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2926
2927
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002928What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2929================================
2930
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002931*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002932
2933Core and builtins
2934-----------------
2935
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002936- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2937 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2938
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002939- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2940 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2941 and cannot be strings).
2942
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002943- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2944 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2945 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2946 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2947
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002948- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2949 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2950 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2951 Python itself.
2952
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002953- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2954 the referenced object, if it has one.
2955
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002956- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2957 the thread started at
2958 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2959
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002960- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2961 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2962 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2963 placed on a list index.
2964
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002965- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2966 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2967 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2968 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2969
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002970- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2971 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2972 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2973 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2974 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2975 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2976 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2977
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002978- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2979 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2980 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2981 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2982 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2983
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002984- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2985 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002986
2987- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2988 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2989 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2990 #693195.)
2991
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002992- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2993 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002994
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002995- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002996 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002997 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2998 interpreter executions, would fail.
2999
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003000- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00003001 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00003002 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003003
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003004Extension modules
3005-----------------
3006
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00003007- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
3008 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
3009 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
3010 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
3011
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00003012- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
3013 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
3014
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00003015- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
3016 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
3017 and Greg Chapman.)
3018
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003019- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
3020 recursively.
3021
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00003022- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00003023 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
3024 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
3025 leaks.
3026
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00003027- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
3028
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00003029- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
3030 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
3031 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
3032 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
3033 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
3034 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
3035 #705836.
3036
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00003037- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00003038 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
3039
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00003040- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
3041 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
3042 See SF bug #692416.
3043
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00003044- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
3045 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
3046
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00003047- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
3048 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
3049 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003050
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003051- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003052 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3053 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3054
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003055- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3056 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3057 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3058 timeouts to work properly.
3059
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003060Library
3061-------
3062
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003063- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3064 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3065 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3066 future release.
3067
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003068- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3069 for querying platform dependent features.
3070
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003071- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003072
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003073- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3074 pickle protocol versions.
3075
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003076- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3077 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3078 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3079
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003080- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3081
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003082- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3083 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3084 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3085 modules.
3086
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003087- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3088 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3089 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3090
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003091- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3092 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3093
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003094- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3095 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3096 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3097
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003098- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003099 MS Office extensions.
3100
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003101- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3102 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3103
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003104- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3105 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3106
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003107- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3108 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3109 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3110 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3111 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3112 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3113
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003114- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3115 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3116 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003117
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003118- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3119 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3120 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3121
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003122- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3123
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003124- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3125 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3126 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3127
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003128Tools/Demos
3129-----------
3130
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003131- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3132 See the module docstring for details.
3133
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003134Build
3135-----
3136
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003137- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3138 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003139
3140C API
3141-----
3142
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003143- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3144
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003145- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3146 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3147 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3148
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003149- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3150 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003151
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003152 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3153 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3154 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003155
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003156- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003157 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3158
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003159- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3160 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3161 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003162
3163New platforms
3164-------------
3165
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003166None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003167
3168Tests
3169-----
3170
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003171- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3172 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003173
3174Windows
3175-------
3176
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003177- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3178 function.
3179
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003180- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3181 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003182
3183Mac
3184---
3185
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003186- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3187 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003188
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003189- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3190 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003191
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003192- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3193 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3194 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003195
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003196- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003197 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3198 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003199
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003200- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3201 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003202
3203
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003204What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3205=================================
3206
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003207*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003208
3209Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003210-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003211
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003212- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3213 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3214 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3215
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003216- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3217 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3218 (SF patch #664376.)
3219
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003220- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3221 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3222 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3223 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3224 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3225 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003226 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003227
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003228- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3229 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3230 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3231 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003232 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003233
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003234- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3235 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3236 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3237 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3238 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3239 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3240 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3241 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3242 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3243 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3244 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3245
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003246- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3247 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3248 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3249 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3250 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3251 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3252
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003253- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3254 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3255
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003256- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3257 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3258 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3259 case.)
3260
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003261- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3262 passed as unicode strings.
3263
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003264- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3265 See SF bug #683467.
3266
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003267- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3268 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3269
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003270- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3271
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003272- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3273
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003274- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3275 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3276 arguments.
3277
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003278- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3279 See SF bug #667147.
3280
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003281- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003282 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003283 See SF bug #676155.
3284
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003285- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003286 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003287 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3288 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3289 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3290 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3291 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3292 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003293
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003294Extension modules
3295-----------------
3296
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003297- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3298 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3299 tp_as_number pointer.
3300
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003301- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3302 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3303 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3304 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3305 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3306
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003307- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3308
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003309- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3310
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003311- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003312 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003313 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3314 patch #678531.)
3315
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003316- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3317 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3318
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003319- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3320 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3321
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003322- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3323
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003324- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3325 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3326 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3327
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003328- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3329
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003330- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3331 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3332
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003333- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003334
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003335- datetime changes:
3336
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003337 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3338
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003339 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3340 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3341 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3342 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3343 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3344 now.
3345
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003346 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003347 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3348 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003349
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003350 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003351 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003352 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3353 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3354 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3355 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003356
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003357 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3358 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3359 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003360 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3361
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003362 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3363 by a later example coded by Guido.
3364
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003365 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003366 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3367 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3368 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003369 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3370 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3371
3372 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3373 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3374 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3375 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3376 tzinfo subclass instance.
3377
3378 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3379 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3380 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3381 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3382 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3383 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3384 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3385 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003386
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003387 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3388 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3389 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3390 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3391 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003392 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3393
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003394 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003395
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003396 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3397 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3398 as a naive datetime object.
3399
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003400 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3401 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3402 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3403
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003404 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3405 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3406 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3407 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3408 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3409 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3410 comparison.
3411
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003412 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3413 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3414 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3415 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003416 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003417
3418 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003419
3420 and ::
3421
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003422 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3423
3424 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3425 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3426 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3427 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3428
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003429 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3430 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3431 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3432 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3433 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3434
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003435 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3436 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003437 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3438 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003439
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003440Library
3441-------
3442
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003443- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3444 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3445
3446- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3447 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3448 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3449 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3450 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3451 See PEP 307 for details.
3452
3453- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3454 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3455
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003456- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3457 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003458 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003459 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3460 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003461 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003462
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003463- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3464 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3465
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003466- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3467 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3468 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3469
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003470- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3471
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003472- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3473 exception.
3474
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003475- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3476 class.
3477
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003478- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3479 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3480 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3481
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003482- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3483 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3484
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003485- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003486 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3487 See SF bug #659228.
3488
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003489- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3490 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3491 See SF patch #651082.
3492
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003493- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003494
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003495- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3496 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3497
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003498- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003499 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003500
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003501- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3502 DOS paths from other platforms.
3503
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003504Tools/Demos
3505-----------
3506
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003507- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3508 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3509 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3510 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3511 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3512 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3513 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3514 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3515 example:
3516
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003517 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3518 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003519
3520 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3521
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003522
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003523Build
3524-----
3525
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003526- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3527 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3528 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003529 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3530
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003531 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3532
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003533- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3534 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3535 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3536 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3537 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3538 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3539 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3540 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3541 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3542
3543- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3544 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3545 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3546 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3547
3548- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3549 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3550
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003551C API
3552-----
3553
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003554- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3555 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003556
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003557- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3558 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3559 tp_as_number pointer.
3560
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003561- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3562 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3563 (SF #681367)
3564
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003565- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3566 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3567 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3568 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003569
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003570Tests
3571-----
3572
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003573- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003574 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3575 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3576 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3577 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3578 pydoc.)
3579
3580- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3581
3582- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003583
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003584Windows
3585-------
3586
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003587- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3588 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3589 time).
3590
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003591- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3592 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3593
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003594- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3595 release without strong cryptography.
3596
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003597- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003598 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003599
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003600- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3601 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3602
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003603Mac
3604---
3605
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003606- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3607 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003608
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003609- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3610 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3611 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003612
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003613- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3614 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003615
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003616- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3617 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3618 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3619 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003620
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003621- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003622 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3623 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3624 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003625
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003626
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003627What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003628=================================
3629
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003630*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003631
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003632Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003633--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003634
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003635- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3636
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003637- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3638 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003639 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003640 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003641 a different meaning than before.
3642
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003643- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003644 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003645 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003646
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003647- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003648 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003649 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003650
3651- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3652 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3653 and deallocation.
3654
3655- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3656 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3657
3658- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3659 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3660 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3661 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3662 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3663
3664- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3665 now detected by the garbage collector.
3666
3667- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3668 [SF bug 519621]
3669
3670- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3671 identifier.
3672
3673- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3674 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3675 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3676 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3677 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3678 [SF bug 563060]
3679
3680- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3681 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3682 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3683 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3684 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3685
3686- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3687 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3688 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3689
3690- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3691
3692- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3693 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3694 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3695 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3696 state of the slots would be lost.)
3697
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003698Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003699-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003700
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003701- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003702 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3703 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3704 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3705 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003706 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3707 Jython 2.1.
3708
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003709- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003710 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003711 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3712 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3713 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3714 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3715 these, see PEP 302.
3716
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003717- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3718 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3719 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3720
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003721- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3722 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3723 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3724
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003725- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3726 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3727 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3728
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003729- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3730 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3731 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3732 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3733 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3734 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3735 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3736 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3737 releases or implementations.
3738
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003739- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003740 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3741 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003742
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003743- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3744 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3745
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003746- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3747 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3748 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3749
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003750- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3751 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3752
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003753- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3754 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003755 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3756 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003757
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003758- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3759 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3760 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3761 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3762 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3763
3764 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3765 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3766 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3767 pattern.
3768
3769 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3770 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3771 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3772 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3773
3774 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3775 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3776 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3777 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3778 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3779 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3780
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003781- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3782 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3783 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3784 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3785 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3786 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3787 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3788 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003789
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003790- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3791 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3792 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3793 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3794 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003795 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3796 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3797 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3798 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3799 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3800 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3801 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003802
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003803- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3804 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3805
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003806- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3807 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3808 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3809 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3810 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3811 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3812 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3813 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3814 to Zack Weinberg!
3815
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003816- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3817 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3818 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3819 type. This has been fixed now.
3820
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003821- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3822 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3823 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3824
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003825- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3826 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3827 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3828 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3829 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3830 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3831 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3832 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003833 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003834
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003835- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3836 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3837 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003838
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003839- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3840 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3841 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3842 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3843 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3844 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3845 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3846 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003847 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003848 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3849 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3850
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003851- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3852 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3853 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3854 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3855 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3856 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3857 this.)
3858
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003859- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3860 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003861 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003862 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003863 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3864 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003865 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3866 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003867
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003868- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3869 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3870 currently running.
3871
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003872- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3873 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3874 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3875 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3876
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003877- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3878 as directory names.
3879
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003880- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3881 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3882
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003883- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3884 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3885
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003886- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003887 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3888 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003889
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003890- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3891 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3892 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3893 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3894 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3895
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003896- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3897 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3898 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3899 removed.
3900
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003901- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3902 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3903 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3904
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003905- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3906 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3907 to __debug__.
3908
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003909- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3910 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3911 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3912
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003913- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3914 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3915 deprecated now.
3916
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003917- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3918 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3919 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003920
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003921- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3922 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3923 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3924 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3925 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003926
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003927- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3928 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3929
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003930- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3931 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3932 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003933 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003934 is backward compatible.
3935
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003936- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3937 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3938 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3939 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3940 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3941
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003942- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3943 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3944 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3945 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3946 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3947 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003948
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003949- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3950 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3951
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003952- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3953 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3954
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003955- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3956 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3957 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3958 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3959 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3960
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003961- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3962 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3963 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3964
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003965- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003966 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3967
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003968- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3969 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3970 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003971
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003972- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3973 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3974
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003975- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3976 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3977 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3978
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003979- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3980
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003981Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003982-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003983
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003984- Added three operators to the operator module:
3985 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3986 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3987 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3988
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003989- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3990
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003991- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3992 archives.
3993
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003994- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3995 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3996 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3997
3998 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3999
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004000- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
4001 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
4002 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00004003 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004004
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00004005- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
4006 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
4007 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
4008 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00004009 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
4010 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
4011 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
4012 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00004013
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00004014- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
4015 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00004016
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00004017- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
4018
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00004019- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
4020 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
4021
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00004022- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
4023 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
4024 supported.
4025
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00004026- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
4027
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00004028- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
4029 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00004030
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00004031- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
4032 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
4033
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00004034- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
4035
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004036- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
4037 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
4038
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00004039- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
4040 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
4041 functions but callable type objects.
4042
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004043- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004044 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004045 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004046
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00004047- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
4048 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00004049
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00004050- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
4051 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004052
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004053- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4054 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4055 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4056 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4057
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004058- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4059 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004060
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004061- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4062 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4063 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4064 and __imul__.
4065
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004066- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004067 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4068 is called.
4069
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004070- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4071 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4072 interpreter was compiled.
4073
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004074- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4075 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4076 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004077 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004078 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4079 1, not 2.
4080
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004081- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4082 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4083 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4084 limit.
4085
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004086- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4087 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4088 bug #623464.
4089
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004090- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4091 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4092 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4093 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4094
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004095Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004096-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004097
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004098- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4099
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004100- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4101 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4102 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4103 with Python 2.3a2.
4104
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004105- os.path exposes getctime.
4106
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004107- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004108 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004109 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004110 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004111 unit tests of floating point results.
4112
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004113- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4114 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4115 has been increased.
4116
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004117- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4118 executed.
4119
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004120- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4121 postinstallation script.
4122
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004123- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4124 test the current module.
4125
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004126- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004127 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4128 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4129 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4130 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4131
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004132- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004133 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004134 Ward's Optik package.
4135
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004136- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4137 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4138 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4139 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4140
4141- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4142 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004143 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004144
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004145- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4146 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4147 shelf are binary pickles.
4148
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004149- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4150 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4151
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004152- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4153 modules are iterators now.
4154
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004155- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4156 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4157 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4158 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4159 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4160 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004161
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004162- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4163 with their entity value.
4164
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004165- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4166
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004167- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4168 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004169
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004170- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4171 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004172 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004173
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004174- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4175 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4176 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4177 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4178 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4179 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4180 main():
4181
4182 import locale
4183 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4184
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004185- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4186 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4187
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004188- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4189 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4190 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4191 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4192 to the new standard.
4193
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004194- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4195 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4196 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4197 an extension to the database.
4198
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004199- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4200 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4201 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4202 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004203 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004204
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004205- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004206 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004207
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004208- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4209 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4210 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4211 bounded integers.
4212
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004213- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4214 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4215 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4216 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4217 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4218 in existence.
4219
4220 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4221 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4222 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4223 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4224 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4225 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4226
4227 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4228 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4229 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4230 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4231
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004232- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4233 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4234 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4235
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004236- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4237
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004238- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4239 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4240 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4241 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4242
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004243- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4244 argument.
4245
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004246- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4247 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4248 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4249 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4250 [SF patch 560794].
4251
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004252- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4253 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4254 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004255 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4256 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4257 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004258
4259- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4260 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004261
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004262- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4263 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4264 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4265 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004266
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004267- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4268 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4269 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4270 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4271 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4272
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004273- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004274
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004275- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4276
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004277- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4278 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4279 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4280 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4281 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4282 identical to None.
4283
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004284- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4285 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4286 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4287 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4288 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4289 results now.
4290
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004291- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4292 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4293
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004294- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4295 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4296 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4297 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4298 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4299 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4300 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4301 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4302
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004303- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4304
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004305- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4306 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4307
4308- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4309 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4310 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4311 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4312 and other systems.
4313
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004314- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4315 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4316 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4317 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 +00004318 work well with these.
4319
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004320- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4321
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004322- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004323 connections.
4324
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004325- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4326 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4327 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4328
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004329- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4330 sets
4331
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004332- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4333 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4334 name.
4335
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004336- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4337 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4338 passed in.
4339
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004340- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004341 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004342 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4343 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004344
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004345- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4346
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004347- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4348
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004349- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4350 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4351 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4352
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004353- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4354 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4355 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4356 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004357 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004358
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004359- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004360 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004361 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004362
4363- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4364 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4365 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4366
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004367- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004368 the value of its expression argument.
4369
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004370- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4371 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4372 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4373
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004374- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4375 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4376 skipstone browser was included.
4377
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004378- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4379 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4380
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004381Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004382-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004383
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004384- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4385 names in addition to accepting file names.
4386
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004387- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4388 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4389 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4390 still used and useful.)
4391
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004392- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4393 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4394 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4395 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004396
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004397- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4398 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4399 the generated binary.
4400
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004401Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004402-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004403
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004404- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4405
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004406- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4407 except in the hands of experts.
4408
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004409- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004410 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4411 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4412 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004413
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004414- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4415 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4416 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4417 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4418 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4419 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4420 builds.
4421
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004422- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4423 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4424 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4425 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4426 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4427 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4428 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4429 new type.
4430
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004431- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004432
4433 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4434 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4435 positive infinities.
4436
4437 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4438 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4439 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4440 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4441 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4442 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4443 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4444
4445 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4446
4447 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4448
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004449- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4450 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4451 size of the executable.
4452
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004453- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4454 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4455 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4456 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004457
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004458- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4459
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004460- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4461 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4462 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004463
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004464- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4465 well as Unix.
4466
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004467- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4468 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4469 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4470 modules in the README file for details.
4471
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004472C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004473-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004474
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004475- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4476 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004477 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004478 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004479 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004480
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004481- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4482 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4483 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4484 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4485 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4486 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004487 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004488 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4489 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4490 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4491 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4492 aligned.)
4493
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004494- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4495 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4496 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4497
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004498- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4499 level.
4500
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004501- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4502 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4503 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4504 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4505 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4506
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004507- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4508 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4509 code.
4510
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004511- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4512 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4513 adjusting for negative indices.
4514
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004515- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4516 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4517 object.
4518
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004519- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4520 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4521 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4522
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004523- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4524 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004525
4526- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4527
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004528- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4529 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4530 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4531 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4532
4533- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4534
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004535- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004536
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004537- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004538 without going through the buffer API.
4539
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004540- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004541
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004542- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4543 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4544 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4545 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4546
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004547- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4548 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4549
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004550- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004551 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4552
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004553New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004554-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004555
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004556- OpenVMS is now supported.
4557
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004558- AtheOS is now supported.
4559
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004560- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4561
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004562- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4563
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004564Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004565-----
4566
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004567- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4568 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4569 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004570
4571Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004572-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004573
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004574- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4575 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4576 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4577 bugs.
4578 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004579 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004580 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4581 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004582 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004583
4584- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004585 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004586
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004587- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4588 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4589
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004590- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4591 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004592 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004593 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4594
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004595- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4596 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4597 use files" uninstall option).
4598
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004599- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4600
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004601- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4602 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4603
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004604- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4605 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4606 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4607
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004608- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4609 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4610 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4611 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4612 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004613 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4614 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4615 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004616
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004617- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004618 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004619 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4620 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4621 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4622 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4623 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4624 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4625 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4626 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4627 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4628 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4629 work around.
4630
4631- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4632 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4633 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4634 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4635 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4636 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4637 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4638 specified with O_CREAT too).
4639
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004640Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004641----
4642
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004643- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004644
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004645- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4646 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4647 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4648
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004649- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4650 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4651 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4652
4653- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4654 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4655 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4656 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4657 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4658 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4659 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4660 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004661
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004662- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4663 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4664 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004665
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004666- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4667 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4668 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4669 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4670 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004671
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004672- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4673 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4674 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004675
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004676- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4677 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004678
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004679- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4680 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4681 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4682 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4683 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004684
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004685- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4686 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4687 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4688
4689- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4690 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4691 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004692
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004693- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4694 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4695 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4696 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004697 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004698
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004699- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4700 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004701
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004702- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4703 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004704
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004705- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004706 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004707 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4708 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004709
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004710
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004711What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004712===============================
4713
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004714*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4715
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004716Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004717--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004718
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004719- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4720 with a custom metaclass.
4721
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004722Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004723-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004724
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004725- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4726 are proxies.
4727
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004728Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004729-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004730
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004731- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4732 very short strings.
4733
4734- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4735 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4736 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4737 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4738 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4739
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004740Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004741-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004742
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004743- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4744 close or delete time).
4745
4746- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4747 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4748
4749- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4750
4751- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004752 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004753
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004754Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004755-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004756
4757Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004758-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004759
4760C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004761-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004762
4763New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004764-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004765
4766Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004767-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004768
4769Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004770-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004771
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004772- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4773
4774- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4775 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4776
4777- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4778 deleted at process exit time.
4779
4780- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4781 in backslash.
4782
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004783Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004784----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004785
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004786- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4787 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4788 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4789
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004790
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004791What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004792===========================
4793
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004794*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4795
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004796Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004797--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004798
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004799- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4800 been extensively updated. See
4801
4802 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4803
4804 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4805
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004806- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4807 deleted!
4808
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004809- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4810 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4811 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4812 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4813 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4814
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004815- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4816
4817 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4818 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4819
4820 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4821 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4822 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4823 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4824 supported anyway.
4825
4826 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4827 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4828
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004829- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4830 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4831 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4832 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4833 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004834
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004835- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4836 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4837 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4838
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004839Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004840-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004841
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004842- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4843 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4844 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4845 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4846 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4847 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004848 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4849 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4850 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4851 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004852
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004853- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4854 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4855 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4856
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004857Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004858-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004859
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004860- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4861
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004862Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004863-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004864
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004865- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4866 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4867 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4868 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4869 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4870 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4871
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004872- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4873
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004874- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4875
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004876- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4877
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004878- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4879 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4880 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4881
4882- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4883
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004884Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004885-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004886
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004887- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4888 off a search on Google.
4889
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004890Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004891-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004892
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004893- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4894 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4895 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4896 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4897 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4898 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4899 other platforms should do likewise.
4900
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004901- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4902 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4903 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4904
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004905C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004906-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004907
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004908- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4909 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4910 producing key-value pairs.
4911
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004912- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004913 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004914 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4915 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4916 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4917 previously went unchallenged.
4918
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004919New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004920-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004921
4922Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004923-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004924
4925Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004926-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004927
4928Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004929----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004930
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004931- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4932 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004933
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004934- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4935 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4936 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4937 home.
4938
4939
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004940What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004941===========================
4942
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004943*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4944
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004945Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004946--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004947
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004948- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4949 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004950
4951 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004952 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004953
4954 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4955 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004956 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004957 This needs to be documented.
4958
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004959- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4960 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4961
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004962- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4963 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4964 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4965
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004966- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4967 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4968
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004969- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4970 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4971 class forbids it).
4972
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004973- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4974 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4975 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4976
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004977- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4978
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004979Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004980-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004981
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004982- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4983 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004984 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004985
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004986- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4987 (like 1 + '').
4988
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004989Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004990-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004991
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004992- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4993 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4994 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4995 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004996 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004997 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4998
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004999- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
5000 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
5001 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
5002 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
5003
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005004- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
5005 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005006 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
5007 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
5008 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005009
5010- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
5011 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005012
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00005013- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
5014 bytes on its input.
5015
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005016Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005017-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005018
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005019- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00005020 convenience function.
5021
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005022- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
5023 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
5024 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005025 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
5026 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
5027 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
5028 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
5029 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
5030 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005031
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00005032- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
5033 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
5034 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
5035 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
5036
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00005037- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
5038 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
5039 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
5040
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005041- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
5042 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
5043 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
5044 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
5045
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005046- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
5047 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005048 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005049 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
5050 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
5051 new -l and -e options.
5052
5053- statcache is now deprecated.
5054
5055- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5056 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005057 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005058 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5059 time properly taken into account.
5060
5061- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5062 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5063 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5064 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5065
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005066Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005067-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005068
5069Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005070-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005071
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005072- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5073 is built with libdb3 if available.
5074
5075- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5076
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005077C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005078-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005079
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005080- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5081 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5082 PySequence_Size().
5083
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005084- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5085
5086- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5087 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5088 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5089
5090- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5091 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5092
5093- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5094 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5095
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005096New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005097-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005098
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005099- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5100 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5101
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005102- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5103 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5104
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005105- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5106
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005107Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005108-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005109
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005110- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5111 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5112
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005113Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005114-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005115
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005116Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005117----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005118
5119- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5120 removed completely in the next release.
5121
5122- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5123 OSX.
5124
5125- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5126 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5127
5128- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5129
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005130
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005131What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005132===========================
5133
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005134*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5135
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005136Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005137--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005138
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005139- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005140 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005141 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005142 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5143 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005144 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5145 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005146 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5147 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005148
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005149- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5150 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5151
5152- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5153 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5154
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005155Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005156-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005157
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005158- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5159 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5160 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5161 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5162 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5163 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5164 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5165 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5166
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005167- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5168 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5169 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5170 example).
5171
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005172- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005173 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005174 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005175 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005176
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005177- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5178 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5179 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005180 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005181
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005182- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5183 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5184 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5185 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5186 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5187 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5188
5189 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5190
5191 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5192
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005193Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005194-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005195
5196- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5197
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005198- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5199
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005200- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5201 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005202
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005203- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5204 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5205 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5206 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5207 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5208 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005209 attributes.
5210
5211- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5212 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5213 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005214
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005215- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5216 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5217 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005218
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005219- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5220 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5221 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005222 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5223 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5224
5225- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5226 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005227
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005228Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005229-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005230
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005231- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5232 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5233
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005234- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5235 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5236 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5237 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5238
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005239- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5240 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5241 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5242 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5243
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005244 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5245 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5246 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5247 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5248 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5249 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5250 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5251 without losing information).
5252
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005253- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005254 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5255 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5256 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5257 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5258 module).
5259
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005260 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005261 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5262 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5263 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5264 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005265
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005266- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005267 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5268 encoding.
5269
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005270- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5271 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5272
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005273- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005274 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5275
5276- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5277 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5278 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5279 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5280
5281- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5282
5283- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5284 ON, and OFF.
5285
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005286- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5287 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5288
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005289Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005290-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005291
5292- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5293 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5294 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005295
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005296- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5297 been added: -X and -E.
5298
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005299Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005300-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005301
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005302- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5303 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5304
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005305C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005306-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005307
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005308- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5309 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5310 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5311 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5312 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5313
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005314- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5315 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5316 as long) arguments.
5317
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005318- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5319 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5320 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5321 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5322 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5323 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5324
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005325- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5326 input.
5327
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005328New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005329-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005330
5331Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005332-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005333
5334Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005335-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005336
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005337- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5338 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5339 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5340
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005341- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5342 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5343 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005344 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005345
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005346 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5347 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5348 import signal
5349 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005350
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005351 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005352 while 1:
5353 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005354 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005355 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5356 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5357 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5358 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005359
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005360
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005361What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5362===========================
5363
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005364*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5365
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005366Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005367--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005368
5369- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5370 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5371 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5372
5373- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5374 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5375 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5376 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5377 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5378 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5379 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005380
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005381- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005382 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005383 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5384 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5385 associate a docstring with a property.
5386
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005387- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5388 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5389 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5390 other built-in object types.
5391
5392- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5393 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5394 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5395 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5396 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5397
5398- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5399 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5400
5401- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5402 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005403 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005404 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5405 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5406 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5407 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5408 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5409
5410- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5411 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5412 class.
5413
5414- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5415 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5416 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5417 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5418
5419- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5420 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5421 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5422 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5423
5424- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5425 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5426
5427- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5428 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5429 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5430 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5431 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005432 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005433 with the same value as s.
5434
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005435- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5436
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005437Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005438----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005439
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005440- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5441
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005442- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5443 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5444 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5445 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5446 objects.
5447
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005448- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5449 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005450 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5451 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5452
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005453- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5454 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5455 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5456
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005457Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005458-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005459
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005460- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5461 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5462 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5463 by the instances.
5464
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005465- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5466 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5467 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5468
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005469- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5470 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5471 before the entire comparison is complete.
5472
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005473- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5474 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5475 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5476
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005477- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5478 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5479 getwriter().
5480
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005481- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5482 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5483
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005484- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005485 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5486 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5487
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005488- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5489 iterable object.
5490
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005491- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5492 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005493
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005494- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5495 authentication.
5496
5497- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5498 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005499
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005500- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005501 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5502 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5503 a sample driver.)
5504
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005505Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005506-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005507
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005508- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5509 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5510 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5511 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5512 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5513 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5514 kernel has large file support.
5515
5516- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5517 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5518 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5519 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5520 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5521
5522- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5523 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5524 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5525
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005526C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005527-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005528
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005529- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5530 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5531
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005532New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005533-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005534
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005535- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5536 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5537
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005538Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005539-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005540
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005541- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5542 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5543 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5544 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5545 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5546
5547- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5548 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5549 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5550 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5551
5552- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5553 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5554
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005555Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005556-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005557
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005558- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005559 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5560 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005561
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005562
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005563What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5564===========================
5565
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005566*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5567
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005568Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005569----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005570
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005571- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5572 big to represent as a C double.
5573
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005574- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5575 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5576 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5577 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5578 restriction).
5579
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005580- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5581 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5582 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5583 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5584 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5585
5586 >>> dir([])
5587 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5588 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5589 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5590 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5591 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5592 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5593 'reverse', 'sort']
5594
5595 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5596
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005597- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005598 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5599 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5600 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5601 OverflowError exception.
5602
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005603- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005604 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005605 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5606 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5607 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5608 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5609 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005610 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005611 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5612 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5613
5614 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5615 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5616 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5617 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005618
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005619- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005620 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5621 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5622 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5623 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5624 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5625 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5626 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5627 once it is created.
5628
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005629- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5630 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5631 (key, value) pairs.
5632
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005633- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005634 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5635 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5636
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005637- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5638 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5639 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5640 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5641 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005642
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005643- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005644 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5645 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5646
5647 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5648
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005649- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005650 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5651
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005652Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005653-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005654
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005655- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005656 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5657 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005658
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005659- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5660 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5661 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5662 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5663 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5664 in this area anymore).
5665
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005666- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5667 threading.Timer.
5668
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005669- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5670 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5671
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005672- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005673 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5674
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005675- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005676 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5677 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5678 converted to Python longs.
5679
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005680- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005681 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5682
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005683- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5684 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5685 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5686
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005687Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005688-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005689
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005690- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5691 division operators as per PEP 238.
5692
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005693Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005694-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005695
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005696- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5697 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5698 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5699 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5700
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005701C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005702-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005703
5704- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005705
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005706- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5707 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005708 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005709
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005710 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5711 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005712 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005713 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005714
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005715- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005716 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5717 module:
5718
5719 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005720
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005721 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5722 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005723
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005724 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5725 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005726
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005727 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5728
5729 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5730
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005731- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005732 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5733 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5734 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005735
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005736New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005737-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005738
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005739- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5740 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5741 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5742 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5743 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005744
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005745Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005746-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005747
5748Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005749-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005750
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005751- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5752 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5753 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5754 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005755 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5756 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5757 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5758 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5759 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005760
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005761- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005762 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5763
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005764
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005765What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5766===========================
5767
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005768*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5769
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005770Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005771-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005772
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005773- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5774 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5775
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005776- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5777 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5778 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005779
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005780- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5781 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5782 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5783 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005784
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005785- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5786
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005787- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005788
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005789Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005790-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005791
5792- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005793 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005794 the module docstring for details.
5795
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005796Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005797-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005798
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005799- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005800 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5801 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5802 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005803
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005804- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5805 Nick Mathewson.
5806
5807Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005808----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005809
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005810- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5811 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5812 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5813 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5814 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5815 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5816 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5817 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5818
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005819- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5820 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5821 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5822 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5823
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005824- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5825 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5826 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5827 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5828 come a long way).
5829
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005830- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5831 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5832 write filters for these warnings).
5833
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005834- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5835 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5836 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5837 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5838 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5839
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005840- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5841 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5842 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5843 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5844 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5845 older distribution.
5846
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005847Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005848-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005849
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005850- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5851 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005852 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005853
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005854- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5855 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5856 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5857
5858- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5859
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005860- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5861
5862- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5863
5864- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5865
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005866- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005867
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005868- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5869
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005870New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005871-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005872
5873C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005874-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005875
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005876- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5877 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5878 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5879 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5880 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5881 against buffer overruns.
5882
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005883- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005884 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5885 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005886 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5887 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5888 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5889
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005890- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5891 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5892 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5893 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5894 deprecated.
5895
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005896Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005897-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005898
5899- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5900 relevant is found.
5901
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005902
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005903What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005904===========================
5905
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005906*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5907
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005908Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005909----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005910
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005911- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5912 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5913 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5914 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5915 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5916 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5917 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5918 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005919 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005920 repaired.
5921
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005922- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005923 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005924 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5925 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5926 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5927 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5928 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5929 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5930 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5931 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5932
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005933- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5934 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5935 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5936 leading BMO character).
5937
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005938- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5939 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5940 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5941
5942 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5943 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5944 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005945
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005946 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5947 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5948 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5949 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5950 for various simple to use conversions.
5951
5952 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5953 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5954
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005955 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5956 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5957 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5958 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5959 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5960 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5961 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5962 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5963 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5964 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5965 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5966 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5967 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5968 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5969 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005970
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005971- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5972 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5973 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005974 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005975 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005976
5977 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005978 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5979 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5980 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5981 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5982 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005983 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5984 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005985
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005986 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5987 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5988 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005989 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005990
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005991- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5992 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5993 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5994 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5995 floating arithmetic,
5996
5997 x = 9007199254740992.0
5998 print long(x)
5999
6000 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
6001 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
6002 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
6003 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
6004 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
6005 functions are of good quality).
6006
6007 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
6008 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
6009 algorithms to break.
6010
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00006011- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
6012 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
6013 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
6014 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
6015 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
6016 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
6017 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
6018 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
6019 order.
6020
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006021- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
6022 operation along the most common code paths.
6023
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006024- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
6025 the same as dict.has_key(x).
6026
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00006027- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
6028 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
6029 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
6030 {}.update(UserDict())
6031
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006032- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
6033 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
6034 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
6035 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
6036 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
6037 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
6038 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
6039 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
6040
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006041- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00006042 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006043
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006044 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00006045 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
6046 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00006047 join() method of strings
6048 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006049 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
6050 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006051 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006052 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006053
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006054- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6055 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6056
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006057- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6058 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6059
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006060- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6061 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6062 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6063 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6064
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006065- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6066 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006067 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006068 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6069 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006070
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006071- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6072
6073
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006074Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006075-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006076
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006077- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006078 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006079 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6080 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6081
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006082- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6083 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6084
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006085- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6086 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6087 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6088 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6089
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006090- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6091 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6092 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6093
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006094- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6095
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006096- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6097
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006098- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6099 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6100 that are still imported into string.py).
6101
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006102- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6103
6104- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6105 Now it does.
6106
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006107- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6108
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006109- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6110 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6111 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6112 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6113 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006114 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6115 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006116
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006117- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6118 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6119 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6120 'help(object)'.
6121
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006122Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006123-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006124
6125- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006126 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006127 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6128 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6129
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006130- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006131 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6132 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006133
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006134C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006135-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006136
6137- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6138 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006139
6140----
6141
6142**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**