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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
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Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000015- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
16 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
17
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000018- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
19 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
20 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
21
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000022- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
23
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000024- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
25 reference counts in some error exit cases.
26
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000027- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
28 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
29 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
30 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
31 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
32 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
33 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
34 realloc.
35
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000036- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
37 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
38
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000039- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
40 like their int counterparts.
41
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000042- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
43 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
44 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
45 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
46 for a longer write-up of the problem).
47
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000048- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
49 serializing floats.
50
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000051- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
52 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
53 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
54
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000055- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
56 278.
57
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000058- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
59 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
60 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
61 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
62 to the base class has been moved the prroper nb_* magic slot and out of
63 PyNumber_*().
64 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
65
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000066- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
67 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
68 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
69 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
70
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000071- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
72 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
73 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
74 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
75 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
76
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000077- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
78 disabled caused a crash.
79
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000080- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
81 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
82
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000083- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000084 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
85
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +000086- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
87
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000088- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +000089 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
90 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
91 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000092
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000093- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
94
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +000095- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
96 returning None.
97
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000098- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +000099 ('\') with a specific error message.
100
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000101- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
102
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000103- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
104 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
105
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000106- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000107 an ferror() call.
108
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000109- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
110 list.sort().
111
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000112- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
113 (2+3) --> (5).
114
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000115- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
116
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000117- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
118 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000119
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000120- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
121 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
122 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
123
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000124- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
125 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
126 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
127
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000128Extension Modules
129-----------------
130
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000131- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
132 on Windows.
133
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000134- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
135 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
136
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000137- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
138 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
139 for large or negative values.
140
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000141- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000142 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000143
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000144- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
145
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000146- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
147 if available on the platform.
148
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000149- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
150 available on the platform.
151
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000152- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
153 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
154
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000155- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
156
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000157- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
158 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
159 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
160
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000161- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
162
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000163- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
164 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
165
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000166- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000167 file size.
168
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000169- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
170
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000171- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
172 {remove_history,replace_history}
173
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000174- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
175 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000176
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000177- stat_float_times is now True.
178
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000179- array.array objects are now picklable.
180
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000181- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
182 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
183
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000184- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
185 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
186 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
187
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000188- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
189 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000190
191Library
192-------
193
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000194- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
195 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
196 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
197
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000198- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
199
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000200- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
201
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000202- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
203 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
204
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000205- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
206 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
207 Tkdnd.
208
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000209- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
210 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
211
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000212- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
213 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
214
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000215- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000216 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
217
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000218- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
219 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
220
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000221- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
222 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
223
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000224- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000225 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000226
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000227- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
228
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000229- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
230 error messages.
231
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000232- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
233
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000234- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
235 Bug #1224621.
236
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000237- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
238 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
239 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
240 terminates by raising StopIteration.
241
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000242- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
243
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000244- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
245 component of the path.
246
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000247- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
248 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
249 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
250 class at all.
251
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000252- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
253 files to PyPI.
254
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000255- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
256 them to PyPI.
257
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000258- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
259 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
260 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
261 work as expected.
262
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000263- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
264 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
265
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000266- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000267 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
268
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000269- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
270
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000271- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
272 to build.
273
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000274- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
275 symbolic links on Windows.
276
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000277- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000278 profile.py if available.
279
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000280- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
281
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000282- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
283 in LWPCookieJar.
284
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000285- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
286
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000287- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
288
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000289- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
290
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000291- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
292
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000293- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
294
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000295- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
296
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000297- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
298
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000299- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
300
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000301- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
302 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
303 be exploited in various ways.
304
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000305- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
306
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000307- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
308
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000309- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
310
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000311- Enhancements to the csv module:
312
313 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000314 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000315 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000316 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
317 reporting.
318 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
319 dictates.
320 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000321 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000322 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000323 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
324 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000325 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
326 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000327 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000328 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
329 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
330 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
331 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
332 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
333 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
334 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
335 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
336 without first creating a dialect class.
337 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
338 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
339 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000340 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000341 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
342 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000343 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
344 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
345 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
346 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000347 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
348 This has been fixed.
349
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000350- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
351 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
352 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
353 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
354
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000355- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
356
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000357- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
358 (Bug #951915).
359
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000360- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
361 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
362 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000363 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000364
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000365- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
366
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000367- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
368 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
369
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000370- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
371
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000372- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
373
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000374- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
375
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000376- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
377
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000378- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
379
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000380- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
381 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
382 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
383
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000384- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000385 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000386
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000387- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
388 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
389 tokenizer with very long source lines.
390
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000391- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
392 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
393
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000394- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
395 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000396
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000397- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
398 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
399
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000400- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
401 correctly.
402
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000403- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
404 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
405 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
406 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
407 between two lines.
408
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000409
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000410Build
411-----
412
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000413- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
414 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
415
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000416- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
417 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
418
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000419- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
420 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
421 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000422 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000423
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000424- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
425 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
426 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
427
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000428- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
429
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000430- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
431 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
432
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000433- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
434 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
435 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
436 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
437 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
438 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
439 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
440 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
441
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000442- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
443 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
444 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
445 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
446
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000447
448C API
449-----
450
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000451- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
452
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000453- Removed PyRange_New().
454
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000455
456Tests
457-----
458
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000459- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000460
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000461
462Documentation
463-------------
464
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000465- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
466
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000467- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
468
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000469- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
470
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000471- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
472
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000473- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
474
475- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
476
477- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
478
479- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
480
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000481- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
482 Closes bug #1166582.
483
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000484- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
485 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
486 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
487
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000488Mac
489---
490
491
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000492New platforms
493-------------
494
495- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
496
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000497
498Tools/Demos
499-----------
500
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000501- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
502
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000503- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000504
505
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000506What's New in Python 2.4 final?
507===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000508
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000509*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000510
511Core and builtins
512-----------------
513
514- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
515 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
516 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
517
518
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000519What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
520==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000521
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000522*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000523
524Core and builtins
525-----------------
526
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000527- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
528 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
529 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
530
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000531
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000532Library
533-------
534
535- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
536 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
537 raised is re-raised.
538
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000539- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
540 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
541
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000542- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
543 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
544 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
545 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
546 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
547 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
548 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
549 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
550 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
551 by the slice are recomputed now.
552
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000553- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000554
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000555Build
556-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000557
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000558- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
559 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
560 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000561
562C API
563-----
564
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000565- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
566
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000567
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000568What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
569================================
570
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000571*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000572
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000573License
574-------
575
576The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
577is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
578changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
579Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
580intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
581durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
582the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
583License::
584
585 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
586
587says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
588to Python 2.1.1.
589
590The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
591License Version 2.
592
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000593Core and builtins
594-----------------
595
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000596- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
597 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
598 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
599 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
600 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
601 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
602 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
603 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
604 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
605 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
606
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000607- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000608
609Extension Modules
610-----------------
611
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000612- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
613 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
614 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
615 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000616
617Library
618-------
619
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000620- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
621 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
622 returned.
623
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000624- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
625
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000626- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
627 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
628
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000629- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
630
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000631- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
632 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000633
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000634- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
635
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000636- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
637
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000638- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000639 the source code is updated and reloaded.
640
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000641Build
642-----
643
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000644- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000645
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000646What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
647================================
648
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000649*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000650
651Core and builtins
652-----------------
653
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000654- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000655 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
656
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000657- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
658 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
659 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
660 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
661
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000662- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
663 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
664
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000665- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
666 constant.
667
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000668- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
669 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
670 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
671 large), and to anomalies such as
672 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
673 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
674 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
675 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000676
677Extension modules
678-----------------
679
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000680- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
681 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000682 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
683 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
684 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000685
686Library
687-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000688
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000689- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000690 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000691 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
692 --swig-cpp.
693
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000694- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
695 it is set.
696
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000697- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000698
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000699- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
700 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
701 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
702 Closes bug #1039270.
703
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000704- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000705
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000706 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000707 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
708 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
709 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
710 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
711 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
712 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
713 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
714 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
715 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
716 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
717 + Updates to documentation.
718
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000719- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
720 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
721 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
722 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
723
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000724- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000725
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000726- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
727 applications should use the getmember function.
728
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000729- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
730
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000731- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
732 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
733 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
734 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
735 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
736 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
737 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
738 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
739 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
740
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000741- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
742 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000743 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000744
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000745- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
746 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
747 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
748 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
749 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
750 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
751 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
752 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000753
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000754- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
755 the new public features (of which there are many).
756
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000757- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000758 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
759 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
760 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
761 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000762 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000763
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000764- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
765
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000766- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
767 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
768 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
769 options.
770
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000771- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
772 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
773 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
774 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
775 conditions under which non-string values work.
776
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000777Build
778-----
779
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000780- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
781 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
782 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
783
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000784- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
785 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
786 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
787 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
788 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000789
790C API
791-----
792
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000793- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
794 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
795
796- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
797
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000798- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
799 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
800 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
801 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
802 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
803 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
804 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
805 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
806 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
807
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000808- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
809
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000810- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
811 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
812 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000813
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000814Tests
815-----
816
817- test__locale ported to unittest
818
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000819Mac
820---
821
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000822- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
823 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
824 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000825
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000826Tools/Demos
827-----------
828
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000829- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
830 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
831 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
832 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
833 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000834
835
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000836What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
837=================================
838
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000839*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000840
841Core and builtins
842-----------------
843
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000844- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000845 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
846
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000847- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
848 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
849 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
850 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
851 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
852 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
853 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
854 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000855 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
856 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
857 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
858 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
859 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000860
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000861- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
862 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
863 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
864 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
865 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
866
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000867- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
868
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000869- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
870 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
871
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000872- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
873 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
874 modified the list.
875
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000876- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
877 functions is now writable.
878
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000879- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
880 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
881 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
882 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
883
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000884- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
885 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
886 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
887 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
888 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000889
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000890- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
891 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
892
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000893Extension modules
894-----------------
895
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000896- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
897
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000898- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
899 data.
900
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000901- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
902 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
903 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
904 supposed to have been truncated away.
905
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000906- Added socket.socketpair().
907
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000908- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
909 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
910
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000911- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000912 versions of Python, have now been removed.
913
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000914Library
915-------
916
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000917- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000918 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000919
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000920- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
921 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
922
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000923- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
924 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
925
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000926- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
927
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000928- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
929 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000930
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000931- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
932 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
933
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000934- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
935
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000936- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
937
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000938- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
939
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000940- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
941 Percivall.
942
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000943- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
944 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
945
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000946- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
947 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
948 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000949 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000950
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000951- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
952 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
953 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
954 and exponent.
955
956- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
957
958- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +0000959 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000960 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
961
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000962- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
963 to the readline module.
964
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000965- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000966 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
967 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000968
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000969- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
970 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
971 contains symlinks.
972
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000973- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
974 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
975
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000976- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
977 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
978 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
979
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000980- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
981 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
982 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
983 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
984 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
985 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
986 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
987 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
988 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
989 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
990 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
991 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
992 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
993
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000994- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
995
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000996Tools/Demos
997-----------
998
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000999- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1000 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1001
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001002- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1003
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001004Build
1005-----
1006
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001007- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1008 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1009 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1010 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1011 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1012 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1013 plans to do so.
1014
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001015- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1016 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1017
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001018- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1019 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1020
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001021- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1022 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1023
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001024- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1025 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1026
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001027- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1028 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1029
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001030C API
1031-----
1032
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001033..
1034
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001035Documentation
1036-------------
1037
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001038- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1039 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1040
1041- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1042 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1043 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001044
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001045New platforms
1046-------------
1047
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001048- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1049
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001050Tests
1051-----
1052
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001053..
1054
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001055Windows
1056-------
1057
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001058- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1059 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1060 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1061 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1062 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1063 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1064 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1065 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1066 the problem.
1067
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001068Mac
1069---
1070
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001071..
1072
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001073
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001074What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1075=================================
1076
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001077*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001078
1079Core and builtins
1080-----------------
1081
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001082- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1083 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1084 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1085 sensitive code.
1086
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001087- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001088 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001089
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001090 @staticmethod
1091 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001092
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001093 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001094
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001095- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1096 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1097 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1098 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1099 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1100 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1101 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1102 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1103 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1104 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1105 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1106
1107 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1108 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1109 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1110 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1111 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1112 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1113 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1114
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001115- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1116 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1117
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001118- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001119 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001120
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001121- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001122 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001123 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1124
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001125- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001126 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1127 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1128
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001129- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1130 types that support garbage collection.
1131
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001132- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1133
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001134- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1135 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1136 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1137 Jython.
1138
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001139- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1140
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001141- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1142 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1143
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001144- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1145 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1146 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001147
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001148- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1149 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1150 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1151
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001152Extension modules
1153-----------------
1154
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001155- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1156
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001157Library
1158-------
1159
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001160- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1161 TIS-620
1162
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001163- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1164 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1165 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1166 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1167 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1168 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1169 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1170 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1171 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1172 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1173
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001174- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1175
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001176- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1177 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1178 same as when the argument is omitted).
1179 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1180
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001181- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1182
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001183- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1184 schemes are offered.
1185
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001186- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1187
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001188- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1189 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1190 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1191
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001192- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1193
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001194- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1195 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1196
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001197- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1198 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1199 when dummy_threading is being used.
1200
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001201- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1202 from a tarfile.
1203
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001204- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001205 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001206
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001207- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1208 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1209 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1210 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1211
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001212- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1213 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1214
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001215- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1216 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1217 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1218 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1219 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1220 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1221 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1222 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1223 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1224 by some other method in progress).
1225
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001226- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1227 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1228 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001229
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001230- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1231
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001232- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1233 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1234 AM Kuchling.
1235
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001236- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1237 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1238 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1239
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001240- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1241 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1242 instead of unsigned.
1243
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001244- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001245 no longer part of the public API.
1246
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001247- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1248 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1249 string methods of the same name).
1250
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001251- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001252 SF patch 945642.
1253
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001254- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1255
1256 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1257
1258 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1259 DocTestSuites.
1260
1261- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1262 that provide thread-local data.
1263
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001264- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1265 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1266
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001267- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1268
1269- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1270 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1271 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1272
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001273- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1274
1275 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1276 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1277 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001278
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001279 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1280 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1281 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1282 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1283
1284 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1285 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1286
1287 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1288 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1289 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1290 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1291
1292 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1293 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1294 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1295 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1296 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1297
1298 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1299 wrapping help output.
1300
1301 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1302 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1303 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001304
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001305C API
1306-----
1307
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001308- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1309 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1310 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1311 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1312 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1313 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1314 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1315 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1316 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1317 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1318 its visible semantics have not changed.
1319
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001320- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1321 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1322
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001323Documentation
1324-------------
1325
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001326- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001327
1328 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001329 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001330
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001331 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001332
1333 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1334
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001335- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001336
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001337Tests
1338-----
1339
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001340- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001341 platforms that use the Makefile.
1342
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001343- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1344 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1345 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1346
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001347
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001348What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1349=================================
1350
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001351*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001352
1353Core and builtins
1354-----------------
1355
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001356- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1357 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1358 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1359 objects now (one object instead of three).
1360
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001361- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1362 Windows DLLs.
1363
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001364- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1365 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001366
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001367- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1368 a new .pyc magic.
1369
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001370- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1371 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1372 be there.
1373
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001374- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1375 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1376 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1377
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001378- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1379 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1380 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1381
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001382- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1383
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001384- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1385 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1386 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001387
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001388- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1389 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1390
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001391- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1392
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001393- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001394 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001395
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001396- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1397
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001398- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1399
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001400- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1401 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1402
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001403- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1404 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1405 Fixes bug #858016 .
1406
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001407- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1408 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1409 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1410
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001411- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1412 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1413 improves their performance (about 35%).
1414
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001415- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1416 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1417 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1418
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001419- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1420 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1421 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1422 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1423
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001424- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1425 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001426 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001427 length is not known).
1428
1429- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1430 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001431 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1432 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001433 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1434
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001435- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1436 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1437
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001438- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1439 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1440 keyword arguments.
1441
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001442- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1443 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1444 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1445
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001446- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1447 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1448 cases.
1449
1450- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1451 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1452 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1453 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1454 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1455 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1456 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1457 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1458 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1459 a release build.
1460
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001461- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1462 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1463
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001464- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001465 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001466
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001467- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1468 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1469 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1470 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1471 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1472 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1473 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1474 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1475 destroyed.
1476
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001477- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1478 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1479 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1480 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1481 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1482 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1483 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1484 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1485
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001486- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1487 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1488 character other than a space.
1489
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001490- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1491 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1492 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1493 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1494 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1495 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1496 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1497 attributes with the same name.
1498
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001499- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1500 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1501 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1502 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1503 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1504 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1505 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1506 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1507 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1508 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1509 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1510 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1511 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1512 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001513
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001514- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1515 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1516 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1517 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1518 This has been repaired.
1519
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001520- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1521
1522- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1523
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001524- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1525 over a sequence.
1526
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001527- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001528 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001529
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001530- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1531
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001532- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1533 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1534 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1535 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1536 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1537 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1538 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1539 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1540
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001541- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1542 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1543 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1544
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001545- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1546 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1547 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1548 freelist.
1549
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001550- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1551 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1552
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001553- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1554 number.
1555
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001556- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1557 a TypeError exception.
1558
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001559- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1560 820195.
1561
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001562- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1563 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1564 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1565
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001566- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001567 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1568 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001569
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001570- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1571 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1572 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1573
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001574- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1575 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001576 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001577
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001578- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001579 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1580 the first call.
1581
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001582
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001583Extension modules
1584-----------------
1585
Georg Brandl33a5f2a2005-08-21 14:16:04 +00001586- Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines() for files containing one line without
1587 newlines.
1588
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001589- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1590 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1591
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001592- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1593 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1594 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1595 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1596 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1597 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1598 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001599
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001600- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1601
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001602- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1603
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001604- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1605 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1606
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001607- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1608 fewer false positives.
1609
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001610- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1611 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1612
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001613- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001614 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1615
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001616- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001617 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001618 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001619 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1620 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001621
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001622- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1623 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1624 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1625 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1626
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001627- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1628 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1629 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1630 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1631 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1632 #897625.
1633
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001634- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1635 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1636
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001637- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1638 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1639 and pops on either side of the deque.
1640
1641- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1642 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1643
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001644- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1645 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1646 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1647 other functions that expect a function argument.
1648
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001649- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1650
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001651- os.getsid was added.
1652
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001653- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1654 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1655 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1656
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001657- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1658
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001659- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1660
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001661- readline.clear_history was added.
1662
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001663- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1664
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001665- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1666
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001667- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1668
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001669- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1670
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001671- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1672
1673- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1674
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001675- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1676
1677- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1678
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001679- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1680 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1681 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1682
1683- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1684 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1685 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1686 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1687 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1688 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1689 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1690
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001691- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1692 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1693 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1694 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001695
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001696- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001697 iterators from a single iterable.
1698
1699- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1700 of raising a TypeError exception.
1701
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001702- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1703 as parameter.
1704
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001705Library
1706-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001707
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001708- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1709
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001710- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1711 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1712 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001713
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001714- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1715 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1716 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001717
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001718- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001719
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001720- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1721 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001722
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001723- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1724 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1725
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001726- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1727
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001728- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001729 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001730
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001731- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001732 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001733
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001734- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1735
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001736- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1737 on cygwin and mingw32.
1738
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001739- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1740
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001741- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1742 module.
1743
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001744- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1745 installation scheme for all platforms.
1746
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001747- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001748 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001749
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001750- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1751 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1752 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1753
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001754- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1755 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1756 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1757
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001758- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1759
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001760- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1761
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001762- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1763 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1764
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001765- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1766 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1767 type pattern with the same value exists.
1768
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001769- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1770 when run from the command prompt).
1771
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001772- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1773 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1774
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001775- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1776 default sort).
1777
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001778- Added global runctx function to profile module
1779
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001780- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1781
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001782- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1783
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001784- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1785
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001786- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001787 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1788 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1789 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1790 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1791 accordingly.
1792
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001793- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1794 decoding standards.
1795
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001796- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1797 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1798 called for all requests.
1799
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001800- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1801 they are passed to the compiler.
1802
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001803- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1804 indent, width and depth.
1805
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001806- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1807 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1808
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001809- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1810 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1811
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001812- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1813
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001814- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1815
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001816- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1817
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001818- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1819 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1820
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001821- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001822 for better performance.
1823
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001824- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001825
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001826- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1827 a string).
1828
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001829- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1830
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001831- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1832
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001833- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1834
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001835- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1836
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001837- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1838 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1839 list of fieldnames.
1840
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001841- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1842 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1843
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001844- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1845
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001846- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1847 empty lists.
1848
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001849- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1850 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1851 and shelves.
1852
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001853- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1854 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1855
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001856- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001857 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1858 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001859
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001860- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1861 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001862 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001863
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001864- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001865 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1866 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1867
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001868- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1869 and removed in Py2.4.
1870
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001871- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1872
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001873- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1874
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001875Tools/Demos
1876-----------
1877
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001878- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1879 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1880
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001881- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1882
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001883- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1884 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1885 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1886 destination in situations where both files are given.
1887
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001888- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1889 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1890 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1891 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1892
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001893- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1894
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001895- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1896 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1897 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1898 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1899 now.
1900
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001901- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1902 in effect
1903
1904- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1905 C-c C-h
1906
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001907- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1908 -d option was given.
1909
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001910Build
1911-----
1912
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001913- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1914 build under OS X.
1915
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001916- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1917 --enable-profiling.
1918
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001919- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1920 is configured --with-tsc.
1921
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001922- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1923 on AMD64.
1924
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001925- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1926 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1927
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001928- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1929 removed.
1930
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001931- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1932 supported (see PEP 11).
1933
1934- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1935
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001936- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1937
1938- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1939 (see PEP 11).
1940
1941- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1942 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1943
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001944C API
1945-----
1946
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001947- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1948 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1949 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1950
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001951- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1952 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1953 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1954 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1955
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001956- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1957 generator objects.
1958
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001959- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1960 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001961 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1962 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001963
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001964- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1965 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1966
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001967- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1968 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1969 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1970 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1971 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1972
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001973- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1974 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1975 about 10% faster.
1976
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001977- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1978 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1979
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001980- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1981 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1982 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1983 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1984
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001985Windows
1986-------
1987
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001988- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1989 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1990 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1991 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1992
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001993- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1994 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1995 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1996
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001997
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001998What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1999===============================
2000
2001*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2002
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002003IDLE
2004----
2005
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002006- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2007 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2008 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2009 context-menu actions.
2010
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002011- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2012 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2013 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2014 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2015 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2016 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2017 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2018 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2019 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2020
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002021
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002022What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2023=============================================
2024
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002025*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002026
2027Core and builtins
2028-----------------
2029
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002030- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002031 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002032 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2033
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002034Extension modules
2035-----------------
2036
2037- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2038 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2039 than once. This has been fixed.
2040
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002041- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2042 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2043 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2044 call.
2045
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002046- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2047
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002048Library
2049-------
2050
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002051- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2052 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2053
2054- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2055 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2056 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2057 restored.
2058
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002059IDLE
2060----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002061
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002062- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002063
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002064Build
2065-----
2066
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002067- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2068 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2069
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002070C API
2071-----
2072
2073Windows
2074-------
2075
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002076- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2077 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2078
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002079- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2080
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002081Mac
2082---
2083
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002084- Various fixes to pimp.
2085
2086- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2087
2088- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2089 more problems than it solves.
2090
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002091
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002092What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2093=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002094
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002095*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2096
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002097Core and builtins
2098-----------------
2099
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002100- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2101 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2102
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002103- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2104 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002105 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002106
2107- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2108 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2109 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002110 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002111
2112- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2113 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002114
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002115- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2116 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2117 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2118
2119- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002120 770247.
2121
2122- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002123
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002124Extension modules
2125-----------------
2126
2127- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2128 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2129
2130- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2131
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002132- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2133
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002134- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2135 contained within the _strptime module.
2136
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002137- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2138 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2139
2140- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002141 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2142
2143- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2144 the find_class attribute, if present.
2145
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002146- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002147
2148 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2149 (SF bug 763298).
2150
2151 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002152 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2153 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2154 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002155
2156 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2157
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002158Library
2159-------
2160
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002161- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2162
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002163- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2164 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2165 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2166 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2167 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2168 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2169 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2170 or Tester().
2171
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002172- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2173 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2174 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2175 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2176 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2177 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2178 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2179 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2180 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002181
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002182 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002183
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002184- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2185 weren't before was an oversight.
2186
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002187- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2188 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2189
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002190- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2191 when there are no lines.
2192
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002193- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2194 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2195
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002196- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2197 to child processes.
2198
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002199- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2200
2201- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2202
2203- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2204 xmlrpclib.
2205
2206- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2207 responses.
2208
2209- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2210 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2211
2212- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2213 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2214 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2215
2216- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2217 used as patterns.
2218
2219- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2220 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2221 than Tk 8.3.
2222
2223- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2224
2225- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002226
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002227Tools/Demos
2228-----------
2229
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002230- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2231
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002232- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2233
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002234- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002235
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002236Build
2237-----
2238
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002239- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2240
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002241- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2242
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002243- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2244 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002245
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002246- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2247 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2248 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002249
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002250C API
2251-----
2252
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002253- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2254 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2255
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002256Windows
2257-------
2258
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002259- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2260 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2261 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2262 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2263 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2264 Python exception ::
2265
2266 thread.error: can't start new thread
2267
2268 is raised now.
2269
2270- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2271 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2272 instead of from DLL teardown.
2273
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002274Mac
2275---
2276
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002277- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002278 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002279 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2280 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2281 the executable in the bundle.
2282
2283- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002284
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002285- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2286
2287- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2288 on Panther.
2289
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002290What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2291================================
2292
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002293*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002294
2295Core and builtins
2296-----------------
2297
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002298- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2299 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2300 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2301 with the -i option.
2302
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002303- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2304 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2305
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002306- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2307 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2308
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002309- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2310 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2311 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2312 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2313 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2314 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2315 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2316 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2317 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2318 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2319 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2320 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2321 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002322
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002323- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2324 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2325 embedded in a lambda expression.
2326
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002327- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2328 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2329 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2330 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2331 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2332
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002333- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2334 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2335 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2336
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002337- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2338 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2339
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002340- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2341 It's writable again.
2342
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002343- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2344 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2345 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002346 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002347
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002348- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2349 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2350 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2351
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002352Extension modules
2353-----------------
2354
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002355- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2356 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2357
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002358- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2359 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2360 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2361 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2362
2363- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2364 collection.
2365
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002366- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2367 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2368 unique within a single program run.
2369
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002370- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2371 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2372
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002373- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2374 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2375
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002376- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2377 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002378
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002379- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2380
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002381- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2382 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2383
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002384- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2385 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2386 for many BSD-derived systems.
2387
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002388
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002389Library
2390-------
2391
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002392- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2393 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2394 primary ones:
2395
2396 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2397 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2398 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2399
2400 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2401 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2402 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2403 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2404 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2405 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2406
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002407- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2408 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2409 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2410 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2411 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2412 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2413 argument.
2414
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002415- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2416 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2417 in the archive.
2418
2419- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2420 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2421
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002422- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2423 569574).
2424
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002425- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2426 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2427 no more.
2428
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002429- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2430 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2431 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2432 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2433 code coverage.
2434
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002435- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2436 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2437 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002438 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2439 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002440
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002441- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2442 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2443 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002444 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002445
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002446- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2447
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002448- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2449 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2450 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2451 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2452
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002453- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2454 handling.
2455
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002456- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2457 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2458
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002459- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2460 in socket.py.
2461
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002462- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2463
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002464- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2465 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2466 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2467 opener with proxy support.
2468
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002469- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2470
2471- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2472
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002473Tools/Demos
2474-----------
2475
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002476- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2477
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002478- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2479
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002480- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2481 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002482
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002483- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2484 files.
2485
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002486Build
2487-----
2488
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002489- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002490 different root directory.
2491
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002492C API
2493-----
2494
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002495- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2496 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2497 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2498 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2499 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2500 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2501 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2502 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2503 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2504 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2505
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002506- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2507 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2508 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2509 from Python.
2510
2511
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002512New platforms
2513-------------
2514
2515None this time.
2516
2517Tests
2518-----
2519
2520- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2521 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2522
2523Windows
2524-------
2525
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002526- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2527
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002528- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2529 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2530 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2531 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2532 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2533 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2534 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2535 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2536 that's what it's for.
2537
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002538Mac
2539---
2540
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002541- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2542 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2543 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2544 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002545- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2546 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2547- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002548
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002549SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2550------------------------------------
2551
2552430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2553598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2554622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2555661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2556683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2557697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2558713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2559724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2560727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2561729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2562730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2563731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2564732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2565733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2566735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2567740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2568744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2569745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2570747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2571749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2572751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2573753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2574755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2575757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2576760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2577
2578
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002579What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2580================================
2581
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002582*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002583
2584Core and builtins
2585-----------------
2586
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002587- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2588 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2589
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002590- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2591 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2592 and cannot be strings).
2593
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002594- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2595 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2596 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2597 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2598
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002599- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2600 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2601 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2602 Python itself.
2603
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002604- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2605 the referenced object, if it has one.
2606
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002607- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2608 the thread started at
2609 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2610
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002611- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2612 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2613 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2614 placed on a list index.
2615
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002616- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2617 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2618 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2619 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2620
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002621- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2622 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2623 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2624 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2625 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2626 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2627 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2628
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002629- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2630 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2631 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2632 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2633 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2634
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002635- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2636 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002637
2638- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2639 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2640 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2641 #693195.)
2642
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002643- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2644 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002645
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002646- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002647 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002648 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2649 interpreter executions, would fail.
2650
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002651- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002652 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002653 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002654
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002655Extension modules
2656-----------------
2657
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002658- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2659 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2660 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2661 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2662
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002663- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2664 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2665
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002666- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2667 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2668 and Greg Chapman.)
2669
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002670- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2671 recursively.
2672
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002673- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002674 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2675 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2676 leaks.
2677
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002678- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2679
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002680- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2681 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2682 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2683 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2684 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2685 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2686 #705836.
2687
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002688- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002689 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2690
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002691- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2692 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2693 See SF bug #692416.
2694
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002695- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2696 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2697
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002698- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2699 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2700 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002701
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002702- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002703 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2704 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2705
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002706- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2707 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2708 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2709 timeouts to work properly.
2710
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002711Library
2712-------
2713
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002714- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2715 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2716 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2717 future release.
2718
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002719- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2720 for querying platform dependent features.
2721
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002722- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002723
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002724- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2725 pickle protocol versions.
2726
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002727- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2728 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2729 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2730
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002731- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2732
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002733- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2734 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2735 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2736 modules.
2737
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002738- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2739 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2740 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2741
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002742- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2743 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2744
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002745- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2746 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2747 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2748
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002749- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002750 MS Office extensions.
2751
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002752- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2753 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2754
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002755- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2756 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2757
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002758- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2759 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2760 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2761 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2762 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2763 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2764
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002765- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2766 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2767 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002768
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002769- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2770 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2771 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2772
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002773- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2774
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002775- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2776 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2777 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2778
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002779Tools/Demos
2780-----------
2781
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002782- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2783 See the module docstring for details.
2784
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002785Build
2786-----
2787
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002788- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2789 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002790
2791C API
2792-----
2793
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002794- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2795
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002796- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2797 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2798 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2799
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002800- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2801 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002802
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002803 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2804 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2805 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002806
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002807- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002808 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2809
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002810- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2811 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2812 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002813
2814New platforms
2815-------------
2816
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002817None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002818
2819Tests
2820-----
2821
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002822- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2823 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002824
2825Windows
2826-------
2827
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002828- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2829 function.
2830
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002831- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2832 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002833
2834Mac
2835---
2836
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002837- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2838 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002839
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002840- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2841 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002842
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002843- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2844 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2845 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002846
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002847- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002848 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2849 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002850
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002851- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2852 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002853
2854
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002855What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2856=================================
2857
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002858*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002859
2860Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002861-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002862
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002863- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2864 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2865 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2866
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002867- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2868 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2869 (SF patch #664376.)
2870
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002871- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2872 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2873 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2874 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2875 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2876 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002877 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002878
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002879- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2880 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2881 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2882 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002883 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002884
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002885- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2886 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2887 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2888 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2889 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2890 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2891 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2892 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2893 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2894 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2895 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2896
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002897- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2898 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2899 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2900 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2901 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2902 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2903
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002904- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2905 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2906
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002907- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2908 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2909 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2910 case.)
2911
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002912- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2913 passed as unicode strings.
2914
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002915- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2916 See SF bug #683467.
2917
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002918- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2919 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2920
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002921- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2922
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002923- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2924
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002925- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2926 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2927 arguments.
2928
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002929- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2930 See SF bug #667147.
2931
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002932- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002933 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002934 See SF bug #676155.
2935
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002936- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002937 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002938 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2939 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2940 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2941 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2942 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2943 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002944
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002945Extension modules
2946-----------------
2947
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002948- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2949 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2950 tp_as_number pointer.
2951
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002952- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2953 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2954 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2955 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2956 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2957
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002958- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2959
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002960- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2961
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002962- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002963 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002964 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2965 patch #678531.)
2966
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002967- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2968 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2969
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002970- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2971 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2972
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002973- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2974
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002975- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2976 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2977 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2978
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002979- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2980
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002981- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2982 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2983
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002984- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002985
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002986- datetime changes:
2987
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002988 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2989
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002990 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2991 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2992 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2993 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2994 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2995 now.
2996
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002997 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002998 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2999 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003000
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003001 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003002 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003003 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3004 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3005 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3006 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003007
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003008 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3009 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3010 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003011 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3012
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003013 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3014 by a later example coded by Guido.
3015
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003016 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003017 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3018 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3019 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003020 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3021 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3022
3023 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3024 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3025 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3026 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3027 tzinfo subclass instance.
3028
3029 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3030 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3031 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3032 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3033 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3034 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3035 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3036 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003037
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003038 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3039 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3040 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3041 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3042 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003043 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3044
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003045 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003046
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003047 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3048 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3049 as a naive datetime object.
3050
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003051 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3052 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3053 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3054
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003055 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3056 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3057 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3058 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3059 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3060 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3061 comparison.
3062
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003063 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3064 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3065 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3066 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003067 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003068
3069 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003070
3071 and ::
3072
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003073 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3074
3075 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3076 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3077 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3078 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3079
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003080 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3081 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3082 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3083 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3084 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3085
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003086 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3087 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003088 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3089 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003090
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003091Library
3092-------
3093
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003094- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3095 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3096
3097- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3098 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3099 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3100 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3101 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3102 See PEP 307 for details.
3103
3104- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3105 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3106
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003107- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3108 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003109 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003110 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3111 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003112 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003113
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003114- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3115 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3116
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003117- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3118 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3119 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3120
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003121- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3122
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003123- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3124 exception.
3125
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003126- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3127 class.
3128
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003129- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3130 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3131 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3132
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003133- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3134 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3135
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003136- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003137 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3138 See SF bug #659228.
3139
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003140- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3141 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3142 See SF patch #651082.
3143
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003144- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003145
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003146- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3147 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3148
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003149- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003150 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003151
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003152- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3153 DOS paths from other platforms.
3154
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003155Tools/Demos
3156-----------
3157
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003158- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3159 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3160 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3161 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3162 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3163 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3164 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3165 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3166 example:
3167
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003168 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3169 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003170
3171 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3172
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003173
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003174Build
3175-----
3176
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003177- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3178 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3179 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003180 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3181
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003182 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3183
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003184- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3185 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3186 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3187 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3188 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3189 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3190 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3191 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3192 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3193
3194- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3195 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3196 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3197 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3198
3199- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3200 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3201
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003202C API
3203-----
3204
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003205- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3206 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003207
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003208- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3209 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3210 tp_as_number pointer.
3211
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003212- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3213 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3214 (SF #681367)
3215
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003216- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3217 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3218 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3219 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003220
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003221Tests
3222-----
3223
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003224- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003225 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3226 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3227 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3228 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3229 pydoc.)
3230
3231- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3232
3233- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003234
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003235Windows
3236-------
3237
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003238- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3239 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3240 time).
3241
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003242- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3243 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3244
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003245- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3246 release without strong cryptography.
3247
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003248- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003249 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003250
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003251- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3252 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3253
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003254Mac
3255---
3256
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003257- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3258 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003259
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003260- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3261 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3262 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003263
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003264- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3265 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003266
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003267- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3268 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3269 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3270 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003271
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003272- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003273 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3274 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3275 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003276
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003277
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003278What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003279=================================
3280
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003281*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003282
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003283Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003284--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003285
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003286- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3287
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003288- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3289 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003290 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003291 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003292 a different meaning than before.
3293
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003294- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003295 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003296 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003297
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003298- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003299 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003300 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003301
3302- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3303 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3304 and deallocation.
3305
3306- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3307 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3308
3309- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3310 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3311 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3312 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3313 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3314
3315- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3316 now detected by the garbage collector.
3317
3318- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3319 [SF bug 519621]
3320
3321- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3322 identifier.
3323
3324- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3325 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3326 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3327 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3328 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3329 [SF bug 563060]
3330
3331- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3332 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3333 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3334 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3335 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3336
3337- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3338 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3339 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3340
3341- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3342
3343- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3344 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3345 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3346 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3347 state of the slots would be lost.)
3348
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003349Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003350-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003351
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003352- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003353 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3354 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3355 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3356 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003357 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3358 Jython 2.1.
3359
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003360- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003361 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003362 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3363 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3364 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3365 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3366 these, see PEP 302.
3367
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003368- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3369 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3370 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3371
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003372- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3373 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3374 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3375
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003376- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3377 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3378 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3379
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003380- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3381 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3382 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3383 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3384 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3385 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3386 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3387 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3388 releases or implementations.
3389
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003390- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003391 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3392 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003393
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003394- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3395 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3396
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003397- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3398 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3399 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3400
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003401- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3402 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3403
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003404- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3405 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003406 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3407 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003408
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003409- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3410 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3411 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3412 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3413 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3414
3415 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3416 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3417 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3418 pattern.
3419
3420 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3421 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3422 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3423 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3424
3425 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3426 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3427 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3428 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3429 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3430 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3431
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003432- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3433 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3434 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3435 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3436 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3437 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3438 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3439 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003440
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003441- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3442 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3443 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3444 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3445 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003446 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3447 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3448 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3449 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3450 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3451 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3452 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003453
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003454- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3455 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3456
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003457- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3458 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3459 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3460 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3461 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3462 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3463 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3464 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3465 to Zack Weinberg!
3466
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003467- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3468 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3469 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3470 type. This has been fixed now.
3471
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003472- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3473 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3474 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3475
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003476- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3477 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3478 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3479 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3480 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3481 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3482 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3483 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003484 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003485
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003486- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3487 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3488 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003489
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003490- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3491 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3492 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3493 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3494 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3495 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3496 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3497 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003498 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003499 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3500 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3501
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003502- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3503 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3504 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3505 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3506 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3507 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3508 this.)
3509
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003510- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3511 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003512 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003513 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003514 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3515 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003516 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3517 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003518
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003519- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3520 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3521 currently running.
3522
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003523- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3524 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3525 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3526 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3527
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003528- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3529 as directory names.
3530
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003531- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3532 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3533
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003534- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3535 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3536
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003537- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003538 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3539 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003540
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003541- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3542 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3543 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3544 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3545 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3546
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003547- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3548 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3549 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3550 removed.
3551
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003552- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3553 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3554 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3555
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003556- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3557 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3558 to __debug__.
3559
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003560- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3561 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3562 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3563
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003564- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3565 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3566 deprecated now.
3567
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003568- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3569 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3570 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003571
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003572- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3573 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3574 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3575 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3576 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003577
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003578- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3579 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3580
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003581- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3582 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3583 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003584 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003585 is backward compatible.
3586
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003587- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3588 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3589 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3590 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3591 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3592
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003593- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3594 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3595 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3596 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3597 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3598 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003599
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003600- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3601 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3602
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003603- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3604 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3605
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003606- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3607 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3608 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3609 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3610 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3611
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003612- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3613 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3614 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3615
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003616- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003617 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3618
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003619- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3620 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3621 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003622
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003623- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3624 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3625
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003626- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3627 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3628 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3629
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003630- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3631
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003632Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003633-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003634
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003635- Added three operators to the operator module:
3636 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3637 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3638 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3639
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003640- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3641
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003642- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3643 archives.
3644
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003645- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3646 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3647 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3648
3649 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3650
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003651- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3652 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3653 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003654 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003655
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003656- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3657 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3658 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3659 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003660 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3661 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3662 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3663 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003664
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003665- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3666 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003667
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003668- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3669
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003670- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3671 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3672
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003673- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3674 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3675 supported.
3676
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003677- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3678
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003679- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3680 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003681
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003682- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3683 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3684
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003685- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3686
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003687- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3688 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3689
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003690- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3691 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3692 functions but callable type objects.
3693
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003694- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003695 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003696 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003697
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003698- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3699 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003700
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003701- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3702 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003703
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003704- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3705 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3706 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3707 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3708
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003709- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3710 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003711
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003712- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3713 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3714 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3715 and __imul__.
3716
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003717- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003718 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3719 is called.
3720
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003721- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3722 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3723 interpreter was compiled.
3724
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003725- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3726 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3727 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003728 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003729 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3730 1, not 2.
3731
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003732- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3733 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3734 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3735 limit.
3736
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003737- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3738 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3739 bug #623464.
3740
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003741- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3742 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3743 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3744 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3745
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003746Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003747-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003748
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003749- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3750
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003751- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3752 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3753 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3754 with Python 2.3a2.
3755
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003756- os.path exposes getctime.
3757
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003758- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003759 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003760 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003761 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003762 unit tests of floating point results.
3763
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003764- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3765 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3766 has been increased.
3767
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003768- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3769 executed.
3770
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003771- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3772 postinstallation script.
3773
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003774- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3775 test the current module.
3776
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003777- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003778 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3779 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3780 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3781 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3782
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003783- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003784 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003785 Ward's Optik package.
3786
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003787- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3788 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3789 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3790 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3791
3792- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3793 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003794 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003795
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003796- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3797 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3798 shelf are binary pickles.
3799
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003800- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3801 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3802
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003803- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3804 modules are iterators now.
3805
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003806- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3807 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3808 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3809 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3810 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3811 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003812
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003813- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3814 with their entity value.
3815
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003816- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3817
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003818- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3819 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003820
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003821- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3822 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003823 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003824
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003825- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3826 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3827 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3828 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3829 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3830 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3831 main():
3832
3833 import locale
3834 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3835
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003836- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3837 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3838
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003839- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3840 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3841 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3842 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3843 to the new standard.
3844
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003845- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3846 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3847 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3848 an extension to the database.
3849
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003850- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3851 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3852 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3853 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003854 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003855
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003856- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003857 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003858
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003859- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3860 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3861 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3862 bounded integers.
3863
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003864- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3865 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3866 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3867 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3868 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3869 in existence.
3870
3871 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3872 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3873 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3874 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3875 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3876 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3877
3878 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3879 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3880 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3881 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3882
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003883- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3884 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3885 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3886
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003887- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3888
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003889- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3890 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3891 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3892 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3893
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003894- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3895 argument.
3896
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003897- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3898 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3899 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3900 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3901 [SF patch 560794].
3902
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003903- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3904 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3905 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003906 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3907 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3908 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003909
3910- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3911 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003912
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003913- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3914 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3915 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3916 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003917
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003918- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3919 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3920 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3921 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3922 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3923
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003924- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003925
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003926- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3927
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003928- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3929 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3930 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3931 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3932 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3933 identical to None.
3934
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003935- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3936 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3937 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3938 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3939 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3940 results now.
3941
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003942- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3943 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3944
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003945- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3946 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3947 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3948 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3949 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3950 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3951 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3952 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3953
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003954- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3955
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003956- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3957 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3958
3959- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3960 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3961 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3962 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3963 and other systems.
3964
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003965- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3966 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3967 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3968 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 +00003969 work well with these.
3970
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003971- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3972
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003973- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003974 connections.
3975
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003976- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3977 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3978 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3979
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003980- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3981 sets
3982
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003983- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3984 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3985 name.
3986
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003987- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3988 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3989 passed in.
3990
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003991- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003992 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003993 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3994 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003995
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003996- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3997
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003998- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3999
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004000- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4001 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4002 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4003
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004004- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4005 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4006 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4007 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004008 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004009
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004010- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004011 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004012 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004013
4014- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4015 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4016 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4017
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004018- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004019 the value of its expression argument.
4020
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004021- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4022 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4023 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4024
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004025- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4026 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4027 skipstone browser was included.
4028
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004029- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4030 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4031
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004032Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004033-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004034
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004035- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4036 names in addition to accepting file names.
4037
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004038- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4039 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4040 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4041 still used and useful.)
4042
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004043- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4044 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4045 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4046 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004047
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004048- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4049 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4050 the generated binary.
4051
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004052Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004053-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004054
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004055- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4056
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004057- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4058 except in the hands of experts.
4059
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004060- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004061 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4062 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4063 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004064
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004065- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4066 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4067 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4068 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4069 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4070 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4071 builds.
4072
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004073- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4074 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4075 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4076 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4077 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4078 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4079 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4080 new type.
4081
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004082- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004083
4084 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4085 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4086 positive infinities.
4087
4088 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4089 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4090 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4091 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4092 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4093 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4094 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4095
4096 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4097
4098 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4099
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004100- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4101 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4102 size of the executable.
4103
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004104- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4105 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4106 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4107 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004108
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004109- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4110
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004111- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4112 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4113 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004114
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004115- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4116 well as Unix.
4117
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004118- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4119 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4120 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4121 modules in the README file for details.
4122
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004123C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004124-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004125
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004126- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4127 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004128 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004129 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004130 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004131
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004132- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4133 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4134 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4135 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4136 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4137 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004138 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004139 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4140 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4141 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4142 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4143 aligned.)
4144
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004145- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4146 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4147 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4148
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004149- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4150 level.
4151
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004152- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4153 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4154 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4155 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4156 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4157
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004158- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4159 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4160 code.
4161
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004162- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4163 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4164 adjusting for negative indices.
4165
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004166- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4167 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4168 object.
4169
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004170- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4171 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4172 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4173
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004174- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4175 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004176
4177- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4178
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004179- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4180 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4181 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4182 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4183
4184- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4185
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004186- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004187
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004188- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004189 without going through the buffer API.
4190
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004191- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004192
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004193- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4194 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4195 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4196 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4197
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004198- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4199 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4200
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004201- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004202 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4203
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004204New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004205-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004206
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004207- OpenVMS is now supported.
4208
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004209- AtheOS is now supported.
4210
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004211- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4212
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004213- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4214
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004215Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004216-----
4217
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004218- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4219 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4220 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004221
4222Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004223-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004224
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004225- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4226 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4227 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4228 bugs.
4229 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004230 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004231 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4232 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004233 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004234
4235- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004236 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004237
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004238- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4239 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4240
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004241- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4242 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004243 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004244 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4245
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004246- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4247 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4248 use files" uninstall option).
4249
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004250- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4251
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004252- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4253 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4254
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004255- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4256 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4257 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4258
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004259- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4260 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4261 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4262 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4263 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004264 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4265 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4266 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004267
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004268- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004269 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004270 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4271 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4272 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4273 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4274 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4275 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4276 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4277 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4278 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4279 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4280 work around.
4281
4282- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4283 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4284 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4285 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4286 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4287 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4288 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4289 specified with O_CREAT too).
4290
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004291Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004292----
4293
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004294- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004295
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004296- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4297 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4298 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4299
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004300- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4301 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4302 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4303
4304- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4305 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4306 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4307 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4308 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4309 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4310 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4311 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004312
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004313- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4314 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4315 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004316
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004317- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4318 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4319 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4320 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4321 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004322
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004323- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4324 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4325 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004326
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004327- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4328 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004329
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004330- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4331 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4332 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4333 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4334 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004335
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004336- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4337 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4338 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4339
4340- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4341 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4342 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004343
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004344- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4345 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4346 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4347 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004348 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004349
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004350- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4351 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004352
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004353- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4354 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004355
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004356- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004357 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004358 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4359 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004360
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004361
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004362What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004363===============================
4364
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004365*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4366
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004367Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004368--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004369
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004370- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4371 with a custom metaclass.
4372
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004373Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004374-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004375
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004376- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4377 are proxies.
4378
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004379Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004380-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004381
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004382- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4383 very short strings.
4384
4385- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4386 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4387 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4388 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4389 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4390
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004391Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004392-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004393
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004394- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4395 close or delete time).
4396
4397- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4398 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4399
4400- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4401
4402- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004403 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004404
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004405Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004406-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004407
4408Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004409-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004410
4411C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004412-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004413
4414New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004415-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004416
4417Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004418-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004419
4420Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004421-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004422
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004423- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4424
4425- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4426 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4427
4428- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4429 deleted at process exit time.
4430
4431- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4432 in backslash.
4433
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004434Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004435----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004436
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004437- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4438 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4439 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4440
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004441
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004442What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004443===========================
4444
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004445*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4446
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004447Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004448--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004449
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004450- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4451 been extensively updated. See
4452
4453 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4454
4455 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4456
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004457- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4458 deleted!
4459
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004460- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4461 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4462 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4463 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4464 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4465
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004466- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4467
4468 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4469 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4470
4471 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4472 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4473 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4474 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4475 supported anyway.
4476
4477 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4478 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4479
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004480- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4481 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4482 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4483 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4484 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004485
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004486- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4487 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4488 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4489
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004490Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004491-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004492
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004493- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4494 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4495 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4496 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4497 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4498 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004499 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4500 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4501 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4502 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004503
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004504- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4505 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4506 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4507
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004508Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004509-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004510
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004511- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4512
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004513Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004514-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004515
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004516- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4517 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4518 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4519 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4520 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4521 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4522
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004523- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4524
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004525- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4526
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004527- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4528
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004529- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4530 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4531 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4532
4533- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4534
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004535Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004536-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004537
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004538- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4539 off a search on Google.
4540
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004541Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004542-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004543
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004544- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4545 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4546 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4547 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4548 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4549 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4550 other platforms should do likewise.
4551
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004552- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4553 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4554 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4555
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004556C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004557-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004558
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004559- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4560 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4561 producing key-value pairs.
4562
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004563- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004564 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004565 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4566 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4567 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4568 previously went unchallenged.
4569
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004570New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004571-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004572
4573Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004574-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004575
4576Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004577-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004578
4579Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004580----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004581
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004582- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4583 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004584
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004585- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4586 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4587 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4588 home.
4589
4590
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004591What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004592===========================
4593
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004594*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4595
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004596Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004597--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004598
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004599- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4600 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004601
4602 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004603 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004604
4605 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4606 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004607 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004608 This needs to be documented.
4609
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004610- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4611 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4612
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004613- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4614 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4615 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4616
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004617- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4618 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4619
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004620- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4621 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4622 class forbids it).
4623
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004624- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4625 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4626 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4627
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004628- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4629
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004630Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004631-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004632
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004633- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4634 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004635 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004636
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004637- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4638 (like 1 + '').
4639
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004640Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004641-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004642
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004643- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4644 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4645 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4646 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004647 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004648 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4649
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004650- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4651 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4652 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4653 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4654
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004655- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4656 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004657 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4658 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4659 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004660
4661- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4662 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004663
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004664- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4665 bytes on its input.
4666
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004667Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004668-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004669
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004670- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004671 convenience function.
4672
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004673- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4674 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4675 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004676 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4677 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4678 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4679 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4680 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4681 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004682
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004683- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4684 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4685 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4686 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4687
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004688- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4689 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4690 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4691
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004692- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4693 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4694 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4695 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4696
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004697- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4698 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004699 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004700 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4701 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4702 new -l and -e options.
4703
4704- statcache is now deprecated.
4705
4706- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4707 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004708 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004709 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4710 time properly taken into account.
4711
4712- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4713 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4714 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4715 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4716
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004717Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004718-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004719
4720Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004721-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004722
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004723- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4724 is built with libdb3 if available.
4725
4726- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4727
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004728C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004729-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004730
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004731- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4732 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4733 PySequence_Size().
4734
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004735- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4736
4737- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4738 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4739 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4740
4741- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4742 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4743
4744- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4745 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4746
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004747New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004748-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004749
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004750- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4751 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4752
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004753- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4754 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4755
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004756- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4757
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004758Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004759-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004760
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004761- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4762 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4763
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004764Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004765-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004766
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004767Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004768----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004769
4770- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4771 removed completely in the next release.
4772
4773- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4774 OSX.
4775
4776- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4777 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4778
4779- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4780
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004781
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004782What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004783===========================
4784
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004785*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4786
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004787Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004788--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004789
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004790- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004791 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004792 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004793 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4794 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004795 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4796 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004797 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4798 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004799
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004800- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4801 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4802
4803- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4804 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4805
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004806Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004807-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004808
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004809- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4810 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4811 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4812 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4813 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4814 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4815 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4816 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4817
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004818- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4819 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4820 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4821 example).
4822
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004823- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004824 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004825 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004826 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004827
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004828- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4829 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4830 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004831 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004832
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004833- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4834 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4835 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4836 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4837 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4838 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4839
4840 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4841
4842 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4843
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004844Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004845-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004846
4847- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4848
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004849- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4850
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004851- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4852 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004853
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004854- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4855 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4856 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4857 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4858 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4859 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004860 attributes.
4861
4862- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4863 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4864 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004865
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004866- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4867 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4868 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004869
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004870- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4871 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4872 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004873 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4874 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4875
4876- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4877 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004878
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004879Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004880-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004881
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004882- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4883 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4884
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004885- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4886 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4887 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4888 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4889
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004890- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4891 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4892 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4893 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4894
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004895 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4896 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4897 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4898 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4899 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4900 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4901 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4902 without losing information).
4903
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004904- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004905 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4906 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4907 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4908 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4909 module).
4910
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004911 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004912 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4913 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4914 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4915 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004916
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004917- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004918 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4919 encoding.
4920
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004921- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4922 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4923
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004924- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004925 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4926
4927- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4928 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4929 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4930 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4931
4932- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4933
4934- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4935 ON, and OFF.
4936
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004937- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4938 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4939
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004940Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004941-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004942
4943- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4944 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4945 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004946
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004947- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4948 been added: -X and -E.
4949
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004950Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004951-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004952
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004953- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4954 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4955
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004956C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004957-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004958
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004959- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4960 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4961 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4962 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4963 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4964
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004965- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4966 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4967 as long) arguments.
4968
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004969- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4970 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4971 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4972 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4973 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4974 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4975
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004976- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4977 input.
4978
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004979New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004980-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004981
4982Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004983-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004984
4985Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004986-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004987
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004988- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4989 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4990 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4991
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004992- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4993 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4994 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004995 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004996
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004997 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4998 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4999 import signal
5000 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005001
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005002 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005003 while 1:
5004 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005005 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005006 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5007 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5008 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5009 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005010
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005011
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005012What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5013===========================
5014
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005015*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5016
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005017Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005018--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005019
5020- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5021 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5022 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5023
5024- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5025 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5026 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5027 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5028 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5029 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5030 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005031
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005032- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005033 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005034 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5035 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5036 associate a docstring with a property.
5037
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005038- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5039 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5040 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5041 other built-in object types.
5042
5043- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5044 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5045 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5046 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5047 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5048
5049- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5050 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5051
5052- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5053 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005054 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005055 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5056 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5057 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5058 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5059 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5060
5061- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5062 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5063 class.
5064
5065- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5066 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5067 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5068 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5069
5070- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5071 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5072 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5073 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5074
5075- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5076 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5077
5078- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5079 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5080 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5081 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5082 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005083 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005084 with the same value as s.
5085
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005086- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5087
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005088Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005089----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005090
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005091- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5092
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005093- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5094 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5095 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5096 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5097 objects.
5098
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005099- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5100 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005101 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5102 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5103
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005104- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5105 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5106 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5107
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005108Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005109-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005110
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005111- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5112 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5113 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5114 by the instances.
5115
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005116- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5117 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5118 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5119
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005120- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5121 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5122 before the entire comparison is complete.
5123
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005124- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5125 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5126 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5127
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005128- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5129 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5130 getwriter().
5131
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005132- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5133 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5134
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005135- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005136 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5137 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5138
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005139- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5140 iterable object.
5141
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005142- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5143 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005144
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005145- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5146 authentication.
5147
5148- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5149 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005150
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005151- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005152 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5153 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5154 a sample driver.)
5155
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005156Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005157-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005158
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005159- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5160 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5161 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5162 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5163 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5164 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5165 kernel has large file support.
5166
5167- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5168 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5169 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5170 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5171 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5172
5173- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5174 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5175 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5176
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005177C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005178-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005179
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005180- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5181 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5182
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005183New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005184-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005185
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005186- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5187 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5188
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005189Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005190-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005191
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005192- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5193 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5194 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5195 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5196 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5197
5198- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5199 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5200 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5201 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5202
5203- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5204 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5205
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005206Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005207-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005208
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005209- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005210 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5211 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005212
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005213
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005214What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5215===========================
5216
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005217*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5218
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005219Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005220----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005221
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005222- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5223 big to represent as a C double.
5224
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005225- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5226 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5227 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5228 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5229 restriction).
5230
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005231- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5232 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5233 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5234 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5235 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5236
5237 >>> dir([])
5238 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5239 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5240 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5241 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5242 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5243 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5244 'reverse', 'sort']
5245
5246 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5247
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005248- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005249 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5250 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5251 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5252 OverflowError exception.
5253
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005254- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005255 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005256 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5257 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5258 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5259 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5260 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005261 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005262 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5263 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5264
5265 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5266 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5267 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5268 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005269
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005270- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005271 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5272 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5273 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5274 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5275 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5276 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5277 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5278 once it is created.
5279
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005280- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5281 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5282 (key, value) pairs.
5283
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005284- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005285 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5286 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5287
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005288- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5289 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5290 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5291 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5292 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005293
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005294- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005295 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5296 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5297
5298 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5299
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005300- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005301 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5302
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005303Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005304-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005305
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005306- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005307 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5308 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005309
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005310- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5311 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5312 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5313 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5314 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5315 in this area anymore).
5316
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005317- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5318 threading.Timer.
5319
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005320- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5321 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5322
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005323- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005324 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5325
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005326- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005327 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5328 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5329 converted to Python longs.
5330
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005331- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005332 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5333
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005334- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5335 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5336 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5337
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005338Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005339-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005340
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005341- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5342 division operators as per PEP 238.
5343
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005344Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005345-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005346
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005347- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5348 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5349 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5350 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5351
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005352C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005353-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005354
5355- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005356
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005357- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5358 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005359 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005360
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005361 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5362 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005363 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005364 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005365
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005366- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005367 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5368 module:
5369
5370 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005371
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005372 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5373 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005374
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005375 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5376 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005377
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005378 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5379
5380 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5381
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005382- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005383 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5384 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5385 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005386
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005387New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005388-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005389
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005390- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5391 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5392 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5393 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5394 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005395
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005396Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005397-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005398
5399Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005400-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005401
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005402- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5403 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5404 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5405 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005406 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5407 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5408 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5409 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5410 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005411
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005412- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005413 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5414
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005415
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005416What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5417===========================
5418
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005419*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5420
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005421Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005422-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005423
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005424- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5425 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5426
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005427- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5428 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5429 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005430
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005431- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5432 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5433 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5434 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005435
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005436- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5437
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005438- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005439
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005440Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005441-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005442
5443- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005444 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005445 the module docstring for details.
5446
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005447Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005448-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005449
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005450- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005451 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5452 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5453 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005454
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005455- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5456 Nick Mathewson.
5457
5458Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005459----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005460
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005461- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5462 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5463 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5464 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5465 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5466 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5467 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5468 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5469
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005470- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5471 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5472 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5473 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5474
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005475- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5476 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5477 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5478 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5479 come a long way).
5480
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005481- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5482 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5483 write filters for these warnings).
5484
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005485- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5486 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5487 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5488 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5489 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5490
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005491- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5492 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5493 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5494 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5495 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5496 older distribution.
5497
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005498Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005499-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005500
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005501- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5502 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005503 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005504
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005505- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5506 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5507 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5508
5509- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5510
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005511- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5512
5513- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5514
5515- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5516
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005517- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005518
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005519- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5520
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005521New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005522-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005523
5524C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005525-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005526
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005527- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5528 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5529 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5530 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5531 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5532 against buffer overruns.
5533
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005534- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005535 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5536 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005537 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5538 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5539 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5540
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005541- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5542 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5543 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5544 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5545 deprecated.
5546
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005547Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005548-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005549
5550- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5551 relevant is found.
5552
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005553
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005554What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005555===========================
5556
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005557*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5558
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005559Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005560----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005561
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005562- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5563 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5564 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5565 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5566 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5567 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5568 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5569 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005570 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005571 repaired.
5572
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005573- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005574 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005575 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5576 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5577 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5578 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5579 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5580 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5581 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5582 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5583
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005584- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5585 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5586 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5587 leading BMO character).
5588
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005589- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5590 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5591 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5592
5593 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5594 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5595 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005596
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005597 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5598 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5599 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5600 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5601 for various simple to use conversions.
5602
5603 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5604 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5605
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005606 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5607 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5608 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5609 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5610 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5611 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5612 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5613 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5614 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5615 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5616 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5617 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5618 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5619 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5620 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005621
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005622- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5623 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5624 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005625 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005626 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005627
5628 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005629 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5630 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5631 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5632 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5633 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005634 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5635 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005636
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005637 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5638 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5639 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005640 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005641
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005642- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5643 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5644 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5645 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5646 floating arithmetic,
5647
5648 x = 9007199254740992.0
5649 print long(x)
5650
5651 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5652 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5653 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5654 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5655 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5656 functions are of good quality).
5657
5658 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5659 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5660 algorithms to break.
5661
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005662- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5663 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5664 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5665 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5666 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5667 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5668 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5669 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5670 order.
5671
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005672- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5673 operation along the most common code paths.
5674
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005675- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5676 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5677
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005678- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5679 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5680 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5681 {}.update(UserDict())
5682
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005683- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5684 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5685 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5686 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5687 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5688 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5689 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5690 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5691
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005692- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005693 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005694
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005695 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005696 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5697 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005698 join() method of strings
5699 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005700 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5701 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005702 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005703 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005704
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005705- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5706 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5707
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005708- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5709 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5710
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005711- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5712 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5713 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5714 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5715
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005716- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5717 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005718 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005719 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5720 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005721
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005722- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5723
5724
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005725Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005726-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005727
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005728- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005729 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005730 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5731 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5732
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005733- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5734 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5735
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005736- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5737 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5738 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5739 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5740
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005741- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5742 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5743 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5744
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005745- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5746
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005747- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5748
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005749- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5750 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5751 that are still imported into string.py).
5752
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005753- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5754
5755- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5756 Now it does.
5757
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005758- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5759
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005760- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5761 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5762 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5763 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5764 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005765 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5766 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005767
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005768- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5769 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5770 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5771 'help(object)'.
5772
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005773Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005774-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005775
5776- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005777 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005778 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5779 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5780
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005781- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005782 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5783 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005784
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005785C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005786-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005787
5788- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5789 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005790
5791----
5792
5793**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**