blob: d7b35d51678294e276e5a0608951170cf79e87bf [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10Core and builtins
11-----------------
12
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000013- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
14 list.sort().
15
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000016- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
17 (2+3) --> (5).
18
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000019
20Extension Modules
21-----------------
22
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +000023- array.array objects are now picklable.
24
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +000025- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
26 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
27
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +000028- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
29 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
30 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
31
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000032
33Library
34-------
35
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +000036- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
37
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +000038- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
39 (Bug #951915).
40
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +000041- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
42 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
43 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
44 encoding alias table
45
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +000046- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
47
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +000048- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
49 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
50
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +000051- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
52
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +000053- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
54
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +000055- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
56
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +000057- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
58
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +000059- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
60
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +000061- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
62 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
63 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
64
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000065- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000066 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000067
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +000068- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
69 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
70 tokenizer with very long source lines.
71
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +000072- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
73 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
74
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000075
76Build
77-----
78
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +000079- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
80 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
81 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
82 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
83 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
84 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
85 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
86 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
87
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000088
89C API
90-----
91
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +000092- Removed PyRange_New().
93
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000094
95Tests
96-----
97
98
99Mac
100---
101
102
103
104Tools/Demos
105-----------
106
107
108
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000109What's New in Python 2.4 final?
110===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000111
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000112*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000113
114Core and builtins
115-----------------
116
117- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
118 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
119 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
120
121
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000122What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
123==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000124
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000125*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000126
127Core and builtins
128-----------------
129
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000130- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
131 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
132 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
133
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000134
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000135Library
136-------
137
138- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
139 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
140 raised is re-raised.
141
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000142- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
143 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
144
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000145- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
146 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
147 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
148 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
149 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
150 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
151 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
152 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
153 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
154 by the slice are recomputed now.
155
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000156- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000157
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000158Build
159-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000160
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000161- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
162 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
163 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000164
165C API
166-----
167
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000168- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
169
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000170
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000171What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
172================================
173
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000174*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000175
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000176License
177-------
178
179The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
180is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
181changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
182Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
183intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
184durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
185the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
186License::
187
188 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
189
190says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
191to Python 2.1.1.
192
193The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
194License Version 2.
195
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000196Core and builtins
197-----------------
198
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000199- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
200 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
201 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
202 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
203 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
204 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
205 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
206 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
207 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
208 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
209
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000210- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000211
212Extension Modules
213-----------------
214
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000215- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
216 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
217 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
218 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000219
220Library
221-------
222
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000223- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
224 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
225 returned.
226
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000227- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
228
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000229- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
230 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
231
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000232- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
233
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000234- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
235 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000236
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000237- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
238
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000239- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
240
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000241- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000242 the source code is updated and reloaded.
243
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000244Build
245-----
246
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000247- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000248
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000249What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
250================================
251
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000252*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000253
254Core and builtins
255-----------------
256
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000257- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000258 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
259
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000260- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
261 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
262 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
263 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
264
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000265- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
266 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
267
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000268- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
269 constant.
270
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000271- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
272 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
273 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
274 large), and to anomalies such as
275 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
276 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
277 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
278 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000279
280Extension modules
281-----------------
282
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000283- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
284 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000285 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
286 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
287 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000288
289Library
290-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000291
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000292- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000293 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000294 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
295 --swig-cpp.
296
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000297- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
298 it is set.
299
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000300- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000301
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000302- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
303 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
304 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
305 Closes bug #1039270.
306
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000307- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000308
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000309 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000310 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
311 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
312 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
313 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
314 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
315 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
316 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
317 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
318 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
319 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
320 + Updates to documentation.
321
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000322- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
323 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
324 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
325 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
326
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000327- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000328
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000329- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
330 applications should use the getmember function.
331
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000332- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
333
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000334- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
335 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
336 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
337 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
338 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
339 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
340 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
341 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
342 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
343
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000344- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
345 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000346 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000347
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000348- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
349 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
350 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
351 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
352 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
353 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
354 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
355 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000356
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000357- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
358 the new public features (of which there are many).
359
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000360- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000361 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
362 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
363 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
364 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000365 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000366
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000367- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
368
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000369- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
370 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
371 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
372 options.
373
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000374- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
375 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
376 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
377 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
378 conditions under which non-string values work.
379
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000380Build
381-----
382
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000383- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
384 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
385 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
386
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000387- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
388 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
389 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
390 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
391 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000392
393C API
394-----
395
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000396- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
397 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
398
399- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
400
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000401- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
402 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
403 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
404 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
405 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
406 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
407 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
408 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
409 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
410
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000411- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
412
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000413- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
414 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
415 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000416
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000417Tests
418-----
419
420- test__locale ported to unittest
421
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000422Mac
423---
424
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000425- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
426 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
427 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000428
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000429Tools/Demos
430-----------
431
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000432- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
433 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
434 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
435 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
436 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000437
438
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000439What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
440=================================
441
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000442*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000443
444Core and builtins
445-----------------
446
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000447- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000448 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
449
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000450- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
451 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
452 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
453 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
454 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
455 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
456 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
457 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000458 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
459 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
460 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
461 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
462 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000463
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000464- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
465 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
466 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
467 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
468 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
469
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000470- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
471
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000472- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
473 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
474
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000475- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
476 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
477 modified the list.
478
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000479- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
480 functions is now writable.
481
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000482- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
483 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
484 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
485 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
486
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000487- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
488 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
489 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
490 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
491 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000492
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000493- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
494 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
495
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000496Extension modules
497-----------------
498
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000499- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
500
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000501- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
502 data.
503
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000504- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
505 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
506 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
507 supposed to have been truncated away.
508
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000509- Added socket.socketpair().
510
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000511- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
512 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
513
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000514- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000515 versions of Python, have now been removed.
516
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000517Library
518-------
519
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000520- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000521 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000522
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000523- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
524 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
525
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000526- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
527 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
528
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000529- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
530
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000531- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
532 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000533
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000534- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
535 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
536
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000537- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
538
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000539- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
540
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000541- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
542
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000543- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
544 Percivall.
545
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000546- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
547 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
548
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000549- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
550 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
551 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000552 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000553
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000554- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
555 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
556 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
557 and exponent.
558
559- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
560
561- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
562 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
563 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
564
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000565- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
566 to the readline module.
567
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000568- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000569 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
570 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000571
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000572- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
573 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
574 contains symlinks.
575
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000576- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
577 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
578
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000579- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
580 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
581 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
582
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000583- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
584 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
585 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
586 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
587 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
588 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
589 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
590 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
591 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
592 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
593 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
594 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
595 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
596
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000597- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
598
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000599Tools/Demos
600-----------
601
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000602- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
603 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
604
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000605- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
606
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000607Build
608-----
609
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000610- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
611 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
612 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
613 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
614 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
615 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
616 plans to do so.
617
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000618- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
619 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
620
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000621- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
622 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
623
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000624- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
625 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
626
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000627- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
628 GNU/k*BSD systems.
629
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000630- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
631 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
632
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000633C API
634-----
635
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000636..
637
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000638Documentation
639-------------
640
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000641- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
642 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
643
644- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
645 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
646 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000647
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000648New platforms
649-------------
650
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000651- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
652
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000653Tests
654-----
655
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000656..
657
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000658Windows
659-------
660
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000661- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
662 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
663 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
664 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
665 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
666 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
667 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
668 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
669 the problem.
670
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000671Mac
672---
673
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000674..
675
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000676
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000677What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
678=================================
679
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000680*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000681
682Core and builtins
683-----------------
684
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000685- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
686 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
687 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
688 sensitive code.
689
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000690- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000691 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000692
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000693 @staticmethod
694 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000695
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000696 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000697
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000698- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
699 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
700 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
701 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
702 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
703 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
704 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
705 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
706 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
707 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
708 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
709
710 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
711 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
712 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
713 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
714 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
715 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
716 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
717
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000718- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
719 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
720
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000721- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000722 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000723
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000724- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000725 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000726 which was missing for no apparent reason.
727
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000728- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000729 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
730 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
731
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000732- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
733 types that support garbage collection.
734
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000735- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
736
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000737- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
738 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
739 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
740 Jython.
741
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000742- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
743
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000744- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
745 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
746
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000747- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
748 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
749 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000750
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000751- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
752 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
753 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
754
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000755Extension modules
756-----------------
757
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000758- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
759
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000760Library
761-------
762
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000763- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
764 TIS-620
765
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000766- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
767 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
768 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
769 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
770 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
771 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
772 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
773 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
774 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
775 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
776
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000777- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
778
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000779- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
780 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
781 same as when the argument is omitted).
782 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
783
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000784- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
785
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000786- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
787 schemes are offered.
788
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000789- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
790
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000791- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
792 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
793 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
794
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000795- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
796
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000797- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
798 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
799
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000800- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
801 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
802 when dummy_threading is being used.
803
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000804- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
805 from a tarfile.
806
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000807- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000808 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000809
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000810- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
811 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
812 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
813 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
814
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000815- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
816 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
817
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000818- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
819 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
820 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
821 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
822 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
823 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
824 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
825 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
826 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
827 by some other method in progress).
828
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000829- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
830 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
831 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000832
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000833- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
834
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000835- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
836 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
837 AM Kuchling.
838
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000839- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
840 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
841 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
842
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000843- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
844 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
845 instead of unsigned.
846
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000847- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000848 no longer part of the public API.
849
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000850- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
851 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
852 string methods of the same name).
853
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000854- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000855 SF patch 945642.
856
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000857- doctest unittest integration improvements:
858
859 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
860
861 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
862 DocTestSuites.
863
864- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
865 that provide thread-local data.
866
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000867- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
868 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
869
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000870- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
871
872- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
873 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
874 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
875
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000876- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
877
878 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
879 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
880 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000881
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000882 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
883 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
884 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
885 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
886
887 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
888 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
889
890 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
891 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
892 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
893 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
894
895 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
896 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
897 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
898 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
899 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
900
901 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
902 wrapping help output.
903
904 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
905 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
906 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000907
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000908C API
909-----
910
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000911- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
912 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
913 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
914 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
915 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
916 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
917 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
918 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
919 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
920 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
921 its visible semantics have not changed.
922
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000923- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
924 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
925
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000926Documentation
927-------------
928
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000929- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000930
931 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000932 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000933
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000934 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000935
936 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
937
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000938- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000939
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000940Tests
941-----
942
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000943- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000944 platforms that use the Makefile.
945
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000946- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
947 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
948 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
949
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000950
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000951What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
952=================================
953
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000954*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000955
956Core and builtins
957-----------------
958
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000959- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
960 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
961 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
962 objects now (one object instead of three).
963
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000964- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
965 Windows DLLs.
966
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000967- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
968 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000969
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000970- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
971 a new .pyc magic.
972
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000973- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
974 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
975 be there.
976
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000977- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
978 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
979 the LC_NUMERIC category.
980
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000981- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
982 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
983 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
984
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000985- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
986
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000987- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
988 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
989 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000990
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000991- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
992 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
993
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000994- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
995
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000996- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000997 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000998
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000999- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1000
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001001- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1002
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001003- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1004 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1005
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001006- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1007 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1008 Fixes bug #858016 .
1009
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001010- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1011 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1012 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1013
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001014- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1015 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1016 improves their performance (about 35%).
1017
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001018- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1019 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1020 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1021
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001022- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1023 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1024 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1025 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1026
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001027- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1028 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
1029 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
1030 length is not known).
1031
1032- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1033 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001034 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1035 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001036 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1037
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001038- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1039 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1040
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001041- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1042 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1043 keyword arguments.
1044
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001045- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1046 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1047 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1048
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001049- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1050 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1051 cases.
1052
1053- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1054 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1055 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1056 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1057 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1058 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1059 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1060 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1061 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1062 a release build.
1063
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001064- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1065 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1066
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001067- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001068 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001069
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001070- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1071 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1072 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1073 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1074 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1075 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1076 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1077 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1078 destroyed.
1079
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001080- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1081 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1082 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1083 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1084 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1085 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1086 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1087 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1088
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001089- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1090 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1091 character other than a space.
1092
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001093- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1094 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1095 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1096 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1097 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1098 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1099 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1100 attributes with the same name.
1101
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001102- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1103 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1104 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1105 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1106 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1107 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1108 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1109 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1110 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1111 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1112 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1113 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1114 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1115 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001116
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001117- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1118 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1119 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1120 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1121 This has been repaired.
1122
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001123- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1124
1125- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1126
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001127- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1128 over a sequence.
1129
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001130- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001131 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001132
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001133- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1134
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001135- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1136 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1137 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1138 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1139 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1140 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1141 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1142 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1143
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001144- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1145 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1146 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1147
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001148- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1149 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1150 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1151 freelist.
1152
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001153- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1154 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1155
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001156- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1157 number.
1158
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001159- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1160 a TypeError exception.
1161
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001162- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1163 820195.
1164
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001165- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1166 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1167 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1168
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001169- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001170 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1171 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001172
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001173- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1174 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1175 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1176
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001177- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1178 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001179 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001180
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001181- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001182 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1183 the first call.
1184
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001185
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001186Extension modules
1187-----------------
1188
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001189- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1190 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1191
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001192- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1193 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1194 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1195 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1196 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1197 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1198 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001199
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001200- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1201
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001202- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1203
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001204- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1205 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1206
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001207- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1208 fewer false positives.
1209
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001210- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1211 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1212
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001213- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001214 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1215
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001216- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001217 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001218 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001219 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1220 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001221
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001222- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1223 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1224 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1225 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1226
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001227- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1228 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1229 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1230 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1231 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1232 #897625.
1233
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001234- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1235 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1236
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001237- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1238 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1239 and pops on either side of the deque.
1240
1241- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1242 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1243
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001244- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1245 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1246 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1247 other functions that expect a function argument.
1248
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001249- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1250
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001251- os.getsid was added.
1252
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001253- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1254 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1255 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1256
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001257- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1258
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001259- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1260
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001261- readline.clear_history was added.
1262
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001263- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1264
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001265- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1266
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001267- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1268
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001269- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1270
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001271- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1272
1273- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1274
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001275- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1276
1277- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1278
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001279- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1280 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1281 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1282
1283- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1284 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1285 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1286 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1287 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1288 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1289 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1290
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001291- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1292 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1293 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1294 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001295
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001296- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001297 iterators from a single iterable.
1298
1299- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1300 of raising a TypeError exception.
1301
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001302- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1303 as parameter.
1304
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001305Library
1306-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001307
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001308- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1309 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1310 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001311
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001312- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1313 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1314 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001315
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001316- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001317
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001318- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1319 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001320
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001321- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1322 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1323
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001324- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1325
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001326- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001327 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001328
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001329- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001330 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001331
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001332- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1333
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001334- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1335 on cygwin and mingw32.
1336
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001337- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1338
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001339- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1340 module.
1341
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001342- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1343 installation scheme for all platforms.
1344
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001345- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001346 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001347
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001348- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1349 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1350 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1351
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001352- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1353 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1354 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1355
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001356- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1357
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001358- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1359
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001360- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1361 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1362
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001363- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1364 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1365 type pattern with the same value exists.
1366
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001367- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1368 when run from the command prompt).
1369
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001370- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1371 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1372
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001373- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1374 default sort).
1375
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001376- Added global runctx function to profile module
1377
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001378- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1379
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001380- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1381
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001382- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1383
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001384- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001385 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1386 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1387 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1388 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1389 accordingly.
1390
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001391- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1392 decoding standards.
1393
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001394- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1395 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1396 called for all requests.
1397
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001398- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1399 they are passed to the compiler.
1400
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001401- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1402 indent, width and depth.
1403
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001404- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1405 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1406
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001407- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1408 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1409
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001410- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1411
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001412- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1413
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001414- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1415
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001416- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1417 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1418
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001419- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001420 for better performance.
1421
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001422- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001423
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001424- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1425 a string).
1426
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001427- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1428
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001429- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1430
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001431- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1432
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001433- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1434
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001435- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1436 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1437 list of fieldnames.
1438
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001439- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1440 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1441
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001442- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1443
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001444- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1445 empty lists.
1446
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001447- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1448 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1449 and shelves.
1450
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001451- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1452 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1453
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001454- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001455 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1456 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001457
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001458- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1459 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001460 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001461
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001462- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001463 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1464 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1465
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001466- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1467 and removed in Py2.4.
1468
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001469- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1470
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001471- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1472
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001473Tools/Demos
1474-----------
1475
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001476- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1477 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1478
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001479- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1480
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001481- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1482 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1483 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1484 destination in situations where both files are given.
1485
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001486- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1487 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1488 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1489 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1490
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001491- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1492
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001493- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1494 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1495 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1496 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1497 now.
1498
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001499- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1500 in effect
1501
1502- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1503 C-c C-h
1504
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001505- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1506 -d option was given.
1507
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001508Build
1509-----
1510
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001511- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1512 build under OS X.
1513
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001514- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1515 --enable-profiling.
1516
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001517- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1518 is configured --with-tsc.
1519
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001520- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1521 on AMD64.
1522
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001523- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1524 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1525
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001526- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1527 removed.
1528
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001529- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1530 supported (see PEP 11).
1531
1532- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1533
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001534- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1535
1536- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1537 (see PEP 11).
1538
1539- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1540 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1541
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001542C API
1543-----
1544
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001545- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1546 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1547 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1548
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001549- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1550 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1551 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1552 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1553
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001554- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1555 generator objects.
1556
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001557- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1558 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001559 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1560 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001561
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001562- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1563 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1564
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001565- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1566 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1567 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1568 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1569 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1570
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001571- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1572 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1573 about 10% faster.
1574
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001575- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1576 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1577
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001578- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1579 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1580 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1581 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1582
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001583Windows
1584-------
1585
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001586- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1587 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1588 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1589 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1590
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001591- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1592 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1593 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1594
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001595
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001596What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1597===============================
1598
1599*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1600
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001601IDLE
1602----
1603
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001604- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1605 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1606 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1607 context-menu actions.
1608
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001609- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1610 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1611 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1612 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1613 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1614 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1615 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1616 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1617 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1618
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001619
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001620What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1621=============================================
1622
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001623*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001624
1625Core and builtins
1626-----------------
1627
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001628- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001629 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001630 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1631
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001632Extension modules
1633-----------------
1634
1635- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1636 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1637 than once. This has been fixed.
1638
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001639- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1640 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1641 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1642 call.
1643
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001644- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1645
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001646Library
1647-------
1648
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001649- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1650 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1651
1652- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1653 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1654 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1655 restored.
1656
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001657IDLE
1658----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001659
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001660- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001661
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001662Build
1663-----
1664
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001665- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1666 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1667
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001668C API
1669-----
1670
1671Windows
1672-------
1673
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001674- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1675 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1676
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001677- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1678
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001679Mac
1680---
1681
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001682- Various fixes to pimp.
1683
1684- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1685
1686- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1687 more problems than it solves.
1688
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001689
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001690What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1691=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001692
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001693*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1694
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001695Core and builtins
1696-----------------
1697
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001698- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1699 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1700
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001701- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1702 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001703 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001704
1705- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1706 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1707 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001708 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001709
1710- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1711 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001712
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001713- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1714 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1715 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1716
1717- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001718 770247.
1719
1720- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001721
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001722Extension modules
1723-----------------
1724
1725- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1726 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1727
1728- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1729
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001730- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1731
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001732- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1733 contained within the _strptime module.
1734
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001735- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1736 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1737
1738- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001739 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1740
1741- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1742 the find_class attribute, if present.
1743
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001744- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001745
1746 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1747 (SF bug 763298).
1748
1749 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001750 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1751 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1752 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001753
1754 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1755
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001756Library
1757-------
1758
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001759- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1760
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001761- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1762 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1763 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1764 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1765 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1766 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1767 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1768 or Tester().
1769
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001770- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1771 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1772 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1773 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1774 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1775 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1776 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1777 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1778 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001779
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001780 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001781
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001782- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1783 weren't before was an oversight.
1784
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001785- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1786 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1787
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001788- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1789 when there are no lines.
1790
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001791- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1792 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1793
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001794- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1795 to child processes.
1796
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001797- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1798
1799- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1800
1801- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1802 xmlrpclib.
1803
1804- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1805 responses.
1806
1807- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1808 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1809
1810- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1811 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1812 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1813
1814- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1815 used as patterns.
1816
1817- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1818 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1819 than Tk 8.3.
1820
1821- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1822
1823- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001824
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001825Tools/Demos
1826-----------
1827
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001828- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1829
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001830- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1831
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001832- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001833
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001834Build
1835-----
1836
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001837- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1838
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001839- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1840
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001841- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1842 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001843
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001844- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1845 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1846 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001847
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001848C API
1849-----
1850
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001851- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1852 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1853
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001854Windows
1855-------
1856
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001857- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1858 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1859 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1860 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1861 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1862 Python exception ::
1863
1864 thread.error: can't start new thread
1865
1866 is raised now.
1867
1868- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1869 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1870 instead of from DLL teardown.
1871
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001872Mac
1873---
1874
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001875- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001876 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001877 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1878 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1879 the executable in the bundle.
1880
1881- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001882
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001883- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1884
1885- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1886 on Panther.
1887
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001888What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1889================================
1890
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001891*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001892
1893Core and builtins
1894-----------------
1895
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001896- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1897 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1898 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1899 with the -i option.
1900
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001901- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1902 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1903
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001904- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1905 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1906
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001907- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1908 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1909 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1910 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1911 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1912 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1913 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1914 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1915 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1916 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1917 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1918 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1919 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001920
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001921- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1922 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1923 embedded in a lambda expression.
1924
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001925- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1926 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1927 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1928 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1929 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1930
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001931- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1932 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1933 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1934
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001935- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1936 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1937
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001938- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1939 It's writable again.
1940
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001941- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1942 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1943 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001944 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001945
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001946- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1947 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1948 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1949
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001950Extension modules
1951-----------------
1952
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001953- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1954 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1955
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001956- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1957 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1958 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1959 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1960
1961- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1962 collection.
1963
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001964- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1965 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1966 unique within a single program run.
1967
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001968- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1969 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1970
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001971- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1972 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1973
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001974- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1975 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001976
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001977- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1978
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001979- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1980 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1981
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001982- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1983 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1984 for many BSD-derived systems.
1985
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001986
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001987Library
1988-------
1989
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001990- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1991 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1992 primary ones:
1993
1994 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1995 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1996 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1997
1998 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1999 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2000 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2001 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2002 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2003 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2004
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002005- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2006 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2007 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2008 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2009 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2010 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2011 argument.
2012
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002013- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2014 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2015 in the archive.
2016
2017- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2018 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2019
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002020- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2021 569574).
2022
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002023- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2024 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2025 no more.
2026
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002027- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2028 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2029 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2030 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2031 code coverage.
2032
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002033- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2034 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2035 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002036 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2037 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002038
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002039- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2040 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2041 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002042 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002043
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002044- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2045
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002046- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2047 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2048 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2049 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2050
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002051- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2052 handling.
2053
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002054- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2055 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2056
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002057- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2058 in socket.py.
2059
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002060- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2061
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002062- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2063 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2064 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2065 opener with proxy support.
2066
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002067- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2068
2069- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2070
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002071Tools/Demos
2072-----------
2073
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002074- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2075
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002076- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2077
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002078- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2079 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002080
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002081- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2082 files.
2083
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002084Build
2085-----
2086
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002087- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002088 different root directory.
2089
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002090C API
2091-----
2092
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002093- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2094 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2095 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2096 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2097 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2098 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2099 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2100 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2101 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2102 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2103
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002104- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2105 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2106 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2107 from Python.
2108
2109
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002110New platforms
2111-------------
2112
2113None this time.
2114
2115Tests
2116-----
2117
2118- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2119 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2120
2121Windows
2122-------
2123
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002124- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2125
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002126- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2127 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2128 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2129 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2130 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2131 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2132 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2133 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2134 that's what it's for.
2135
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002136Mac
2137---
2138
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002139- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2140 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2141 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2142 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002143- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2144 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2145- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002146
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002147SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2148------------------------------------
2149
2150430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2151598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2152622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2153661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2154683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2155697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2156713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2157724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2158727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2159729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2160730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2161731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2162732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2163733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2164735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2165740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2166744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2167745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2168747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2169749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2170751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2171753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2172755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2173757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2174760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2175
2176
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002177What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2178================================
2179
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002180*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002181
2182Core and builtins
2183-----------------
2184
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002185- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2186 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2187
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002188- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2189 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2190 and cannot be strings).
2191
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002192- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2193 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2194 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2195 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2196
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002197- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2198 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2199 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2200 Python itself.
2201
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002202- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2203 the referenced object, if it has one.
2204
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002205- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2206 the thread started at
2207 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2208
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002209- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2210 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2211 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2212 placed on a list index.
2213
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002214- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2215 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2216 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2217 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2218
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002219- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2220 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2221 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2222 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2223 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2224 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2225 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2226
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002227- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2228 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2229 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2230 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2231 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2232
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002233- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2234 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002235
2236- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2237 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2238 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2239 #693195.)
2240
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002241- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2242 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002243
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002244- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002245 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002246 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2247 interpreter executions, would fail.
2248
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002249- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002250 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002251 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002252
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002253Extension modules
2254-----------------
2255
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002256- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2257 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2258 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2259 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2260
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002261- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2262 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2263
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002264- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2265 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2266 and Greg Chapman.)
2267
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002268- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2269 recursively.
2270
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002271- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002272 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2273 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2274 leaks.
2275
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002276- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2277
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002278- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2279 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2280 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2281 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2282 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2283 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2284 #705836.
2285
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002286- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002287 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2288
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002289- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2290 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2291 See SF bug #692416.
2292
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002293- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2294 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2295
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002296- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2297 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2298 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002299
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002300- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002301 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2302 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2303
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002304- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2305 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2306 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2307 timeouts to work properly.
2308
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002309Library
2310-------
2311
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002312- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2313 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2314 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2315 future release.
2316
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002317- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2318 for querying platform dependent features.
2319
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002320- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002321
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002322- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2323 pickle protocol versions.
2324
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002325- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2326 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2327 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2328
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002329- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2330
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002331- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2332 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2333 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2334 modules.
2335
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002336- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2337 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2338 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2339
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002340- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2341 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2342
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002343- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2344 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2345 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2346
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002347- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002348 MS Office extensions.
2349
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002350- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2351 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2352
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002353- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2354 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2355
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002356- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2357 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2358 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2359 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2360 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2361 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2362
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002363- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2364 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2365 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002366
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002367- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2368 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2369 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2370
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002371- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2372
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002373- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2374 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2375 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2376
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002377Tools/Demos
2378-----------
2379
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002380- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2381 See the module docstring for details.
2382
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002383Build
2384-----
2385
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002386- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2387 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002388
2389C API
2390-----
2391
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002392- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2393
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002394- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2395 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2396 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2397
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002398- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2399 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002400
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002401 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2402 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2403 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002404
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002405- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002406 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2407
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002408- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2409 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2410 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002411
2412New platforms
2413-------------
2414
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002415None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002416
2417Tests
2418-----
2419
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002420- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2421 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002422
2423Windows
2424-------
2425
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002426- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2427 function.
2428
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002429- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2430 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002431
2432Mac
2433---
2434
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002435- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2436 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002437
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002438- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2439 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002440
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002441- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2442 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2443 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002444
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002445- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002446 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2447 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002448
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002449- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2450 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002451
2452
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002453What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2454=================================
2455
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002456*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002457
2458Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002459-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002460
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002461- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2462 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2463 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2464
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002465- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2466 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2467 (SF patch #664376.)
2468
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002469- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2470 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2471 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2472 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2473 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2474 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002475 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002476
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002477- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2478 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2479 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2480 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002481 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002482
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002483- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2484 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2485 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2486 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2487 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2488 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2489 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2490 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2491 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2492 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2493 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2494
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002495- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2496 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2497 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2498 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2499 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2500 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2501
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002502- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2503 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2504
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002505- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2506 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2507 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2508 case.)
2509
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002510- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2511 passed as unicode strings.
2512
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002513- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2514 See SF bug #683467.
2515
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002516- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2517 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2518
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002519- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2520
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002521- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2522
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002523- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2524 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2525 arguments.
2526
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002527- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2528 See SF bug #667147.
2529
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002530- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002531 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002532 See SF bug #676155.
2533
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002534- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002535 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002536 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2537 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2538 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2539 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2540 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2541 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002542
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002543Extension modules
2544-----------------
2545
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002546- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2547 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2548 tp_as_number pointer.
2549
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002550- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2551 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2552 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2553 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2554 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2555
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002556- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2557
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002558- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2559
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002560- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002561 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002562 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2563 patch #678531.)
2564
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002565- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2566 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2567
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002568- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2569 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2570
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002571- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2572
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002573- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2574 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2575 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2576
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002577- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2578
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002579- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2580 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2581
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002582- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002583
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002584- datetime changes:
2585
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002586 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2587
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002588 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2589 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2590 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2591 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2592 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2593 now.
2594
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002595 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002596 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2597 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002598
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002599 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002600 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002601 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2602 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2603 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2604 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002605
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002606 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2607 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2608 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002609 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2610
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002611 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2612 by a later example coded by Guido.
2613
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002614 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002615 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2616 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2617 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002618 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2619 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2620
2621 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2622 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2623 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2624 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2625 tzinfo subclass instance.
2626
2627 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2628 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2629 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2630 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2631 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2632 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2633 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2634 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002635
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002636 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2637 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2638 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2639 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2640 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002641 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2642
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002643 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002644
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002645 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2646 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2647 as a naive datetime object.
2648
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002649 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2650 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2651 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2652
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002653 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2654 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2655 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2656 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2657 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2658 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2659 comparison.
2660
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002661 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2662 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2663 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2664 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002665 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002666
2667 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002668
2669 and ::
2670
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002671 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2672
2673 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2674 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2675 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2676 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2677
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002678 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2679 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2680 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2681 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2682 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2683
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002684 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2685 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002686 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2687 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002688
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002689Library
2690-------
2691
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002692- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2693 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2694
2695- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2696 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2697 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2698 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2699 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2700 See PEP 307 for details.
2701
2702- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2703 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2704
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002705- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2706 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002707 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002708 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2709 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002710 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002711
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002712- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2713 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2714
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002715- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2716 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2717 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2718
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002719- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2720
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002721- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2722 exception.
2723
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002724- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2725 class.
2726
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002727- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2728 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2729 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2730
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002731- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2732 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2733
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002734- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002735 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2736 See SF bug #659228.
2737
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002738- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2739 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2740 See SF patch #651082.
2741
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002742- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002743
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002744- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2745 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2746
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002747- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002748 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002749
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002750- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2751 DOS paths from other platforms.
2752
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002753Tools/Demos
2754-----------
2755
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002756- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2757 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2758 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2759 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2760 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2761 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2762 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2763 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2764 example:
2765
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002766 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2767 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002768
2769 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2770
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002771
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002772Build
2773-----
2774
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002775- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2776 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2777 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002778 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2779
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002780 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2781
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002782- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2783 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2784 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2785 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2786 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2787 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2788 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2789 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2790 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2791
2792- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2793 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2794 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2795 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2796
2797- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2798 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2799
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002800C API
2801-----
2802
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002803- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2804 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002805
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002806- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2807 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2808 tp_as_number pointer.
2809
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002810- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2811 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2812 (SF #681367)
2813
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002814- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2815 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2816 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2817 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002818
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002819Tests
2820-----
2821
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002822- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002823 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2824 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2825 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2826 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2827 pydoc.)
2828
2829- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2830
2831- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002832
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002833Windows
2834-------
2835
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002836- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2837 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2838 time).
2839
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002840- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2841 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2842
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002843- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2844 release without strong cryptography.
2845
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002846- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002847 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002848
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002849- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2850 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2851
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002852Mac
2853---
2854
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002855- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2856 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002857
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002858- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2859 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2860 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002861
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002862- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2863 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002864
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002865- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2866 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2867 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2868 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002869
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002870- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002871 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2872 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2873 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002874
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002875
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002876What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002877=================================
2878
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002879*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002880
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002881Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002882--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002883
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002884- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2885
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002886- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2887 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002888 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002889 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002890 a different meaning than before.
2891
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002892- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002893 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002894 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002895
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002896- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002897 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002898 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002899
2900- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2901 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2902 and deallocation.
2903
2904- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2905 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2906
2907- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2908 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2909 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2910 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2911 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2912
2913- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2914 now detected by the garbage collector.
2915
2916- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2917 [SF bug 519621]
2918
2919- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2920 identifier.
2921
2922- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2923 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2924 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2925 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2926 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2927 [SF bug 563060]
2928
2929- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2930 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2931 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2932 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2933 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2934
2935- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2936 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2937 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2938
2939- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2940
2941- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2942 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2943 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2944 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2945 state of the slots would be lost.)
2946
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002947Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002948-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002949
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002950- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002951 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2952 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2953 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2954 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002955 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2956 Jython 2.1.
2957
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002958- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002959 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002960 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2961 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2962 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2963 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2964 these, see PEP 302.
2965
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002966- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2967 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2968 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2969
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002970- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2971 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2972 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2973
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002974- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2975 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2976 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2977
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002978- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2979 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2980 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2981 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2982 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2983 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2984 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2985 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2986 releases or implementations.
2987
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002988- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002989 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2990 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002991
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002992- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2993 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2994
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002995- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2996 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2997 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2998
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002999- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3000 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3001
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003002- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3003 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003004 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3005 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003006
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003007- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3008 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3009 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3010 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3011 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3012
3013 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3014 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3015 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3016 pattern.
3017
3018 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3019 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3020 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3021 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3022
3023 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3024 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3025 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3026 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3027 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3028 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3029
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003030- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3031 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3032 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3033 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3034 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3035 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3036 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3037 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003038
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003039- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3040 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3041 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3042 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3043 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003044 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3045 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3046 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3047 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3048 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3049 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3050 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003051
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003052- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3053 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3054
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003055- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3056 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3057 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3058 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3059 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3060 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3061 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3062 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3063 to Zack Weinberg!
3064
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003065- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3066 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3067 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3068 type. This has been fixed now.
3069
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003070- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3071 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3072 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3073
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003074- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3075 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3076 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3077 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3078 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3079 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3080 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3081 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003082 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003083
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003084- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3085 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3086 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003087
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003088- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3089 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3090 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3091 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3092 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3093 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3094 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3095 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003096 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003097 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3098 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3099
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003100- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3101 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3102 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3103 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3104 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3105 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3106 this.)
3107
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003108- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3109 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003110 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003111 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003112 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3113 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003114 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3115 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003116
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003117- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3118 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3119 currently running.
3120
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003121- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3122 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3123 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3124 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3125
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003126- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3127 as directory names.
3128
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003129- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3130 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3131
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003132- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3133 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3134
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003135- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003136 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3137 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003138
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003139- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3140 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3141 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3142 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3143 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3144
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003145- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3146 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3147 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3148 removed.
3149
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003150- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3151 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3152 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3153
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003154- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3155 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3156 to __debug__.
3157
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003158- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3159 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3160 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3161
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003162- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3163 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3164 deprecated now.
3165
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003166- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3167 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3168 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003169
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003170- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3171 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3172 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3173 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3174 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003175
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003176- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3177 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3178
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003179- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3180 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3181 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003182 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003183 is backward compatible.
3184
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003185- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3186 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3187 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3188 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3189 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3190
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003191- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3192 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3193 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3194 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3195 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3196 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003197
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003198- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3199 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3200
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003201- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3202 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3203
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003204- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3205 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3206 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3207 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3208 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3209
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003210- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3211 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3212 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3213
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003214- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003215 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3216
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003217- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3218 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3219 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003220
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003221- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3222 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3223
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003224- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3225 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3226 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3227
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003228- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3229
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003230Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003231-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003232
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003233- Added three operators to the operator module:
3234 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3235 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3236 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3237
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003238- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3239
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003240- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3241 archives.
3242
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003243- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3244 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3245 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3246
3247 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3248
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003249- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3250 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3251 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003252 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003253
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003254- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3255 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3256 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3257 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003258 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3259 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3260 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3261 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003262
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003263- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3264 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003265
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003266- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3267
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003268- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3269 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3270
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003271- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3272 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3273 supported.
3274
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003275- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3276
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003277- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3278 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003279
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003280- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3281 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3282
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003283- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3284
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003285- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3286 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3287
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003288- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3289 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3290 functions but callable type objects.
3291
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003292- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003293 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003294 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003295
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003296- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3297 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003298
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003299- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3300 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003301
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003302- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3303 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3304 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3305 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3306
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003307- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3308 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003309
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003310- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3311 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3312 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3313 and __imul__.
3314
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003315- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003316 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3317 is called.
3318
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003319- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3320 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3321 interpreter was compiled.
3322
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003323- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3324 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3325 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003326 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003327 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3328 1, not 2.
3329
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003330- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3331 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3332 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3333 limit.
3334
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003335- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3336 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3337 bug #623464.
3338
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003339- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3340 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3341 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3342 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3343
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003344Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003345-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003346
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003347- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3348
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003349- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3350 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3351 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3352 with Python 2.3a2.
3353
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003354- os.path exposes getctime.
3355
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003356- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003357 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003358 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003359 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003360 unit tests of floating point results.
3361
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003362- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3363 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3364 has been increased.
3365
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003366- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3367 executed.
3368
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003369- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3370 postinstallation script.
3371
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003372- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3373 test the current module.
3374
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003375- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003376 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3377 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3378 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3379 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3380
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003381- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003382 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003383 Ward's Optik package.
3384
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003385- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3386 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3387 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3388 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3389
3390- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3391 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003392 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003393
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003394- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3395 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3396 shelf are binary pickles.
3397
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003398- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3399 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3400
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003401- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3402 modules are iterators now.
3403
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003404- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3405 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3406 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3407 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3408 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3409 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003410
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003411- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3412 with their entity value.
3413
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003414- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3415
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003416- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3417 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003418
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003419- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3420 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003421 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003422
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003423- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3424 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3425 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3426 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3427 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3428 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3429 main():
3430
3431 import locale
3432 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3433
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003434- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3435 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3436
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003437- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3438 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3439 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3440 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3441 to the new standard.
3442
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003443- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3444 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3445 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3446 an extension to the database.
3447
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003448- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3449 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3450 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3451 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003452 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003453
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003454- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003455 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003456
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003457- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3458 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3459 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3460 bounded integers.
3461
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003462- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3463 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3464 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3465 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3466 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3467 in existence.
3468
3469 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3470 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3471 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3472 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3473 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3474 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3475
3476 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3477 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3478 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3479 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3480
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003481- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3482 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3483 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3484
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003485- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3486
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003487- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3488 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3489 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3490 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3491
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003492- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3493 argument.
3494
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003495- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3496 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3497 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3498 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3499 [SF patch 560794].
3500
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003501- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3502 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3503 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003504 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3505 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3506 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003507
3508- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3509 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003510
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003511- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3512 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3513 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3514 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003515
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003516- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3517 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3518 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3519 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3520 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3521
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003522- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003523
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003524- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3525
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003526- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3527 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3528 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3529 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3530 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3531 identical to None.
3532
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003533- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3534 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3535 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3536 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3537 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3538 results now.
3539
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003540- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3541 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3542
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003543- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3544 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3545 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3546 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3547 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3548 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3549 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3550 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3551
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003552- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3553
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003554- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3555 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3556
3557- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3558 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3559 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3560 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3561 and other systems.
3562
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003563- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3564 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3565 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3566 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 +00003567 work well with these.
3568
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003569- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3570
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003571- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003572 connections.
3573
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003574- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3575 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3576 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3577
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003578- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3579 sets
3580
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003581- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3582 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3583 name.
3584
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003585- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3586 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3587 passed in.
3588
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003589- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003590 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003591 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3592 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003593
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003594- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3595
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003596- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3597
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003598- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3599 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3600 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3601
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003602- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3603 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3604 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3605 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003606 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003607
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003608- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003609 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003610 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003611
3612- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3613 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3614 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3615
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003616- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003617 the value of its expression argument.
3618
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003619- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3620 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3621 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3622
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003623- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3624 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3625 skipstone browser was included.
3626
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003627- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3628 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3629
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003630Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003631-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003632
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003633- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3634 names in addition to accepting file names.
3635
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003636- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3637 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3638 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3639 still used and useful.)
3640
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003641- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3642 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3643 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3644 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003645
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003646- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3647 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3648 the generated binary.
3649
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003650Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003651-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003652
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003653- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3654
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003655- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3656 except in the hands of experts.
3657
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003658- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003659 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3660 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3661 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003662
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003663- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3664 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3665 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3666 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3667 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3668 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3669 builds.
3670
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003671- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3672 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3673 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3674 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3675 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3676 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3677 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3678 new type.
3679
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003680- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003681
3682 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3683 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3684 positive infinities.
3685
3686 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3687 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3688 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3689 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3690 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3691 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3692 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3693
3694 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3695
3696 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3697
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003698- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3699 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3700 size of the executable.
3701
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003702- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3703 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3704 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3705 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003706
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003707- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3708
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003709- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3710 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3711 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003712
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003713- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3714 well as Unix.
3715
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003716- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3717 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3718 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3719 modules in the README file for details.
3720
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003721C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003722-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003723
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003724- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3725 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003726 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003727 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003728 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003729
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003730- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3731 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3732 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3733 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3734 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3735 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003736 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003737 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3738 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3739 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3740 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3741 aligned.)
3742
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003743- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3744 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3745 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3746
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003747- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3748 level.
3749
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003750- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3751 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3752 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3753 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3754 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3755
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003756- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3757 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3758 code.
3759
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003760- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3761 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3762 adjusting for negative indices.
3763
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003764- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3765 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3766 object.
3767
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003768- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3769 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3770 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3771
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003772- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3773 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003774
3775- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3776
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003777- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3778 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3779 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3780 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3781
3782- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3783
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003784- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003785
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003786- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003787 without going through the buffer API.
3788
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003789- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003790
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003791- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3792 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3793 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3794 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3795
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003796- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3797 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3798
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003799- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003800 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3801
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003802New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003803-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003804
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003805- OpenVMS is now supported.
3806
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003807- AtheOS is now supported.
3808
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003809- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3810
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003811- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3812
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003813Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003814-----
3815
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003816- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3817 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3818 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003819
3820Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003821-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003822
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003823- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3824 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3825 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3826 bugs.
3827 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003828 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003829 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3830 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003831 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003832
3833- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003834 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003835
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003836- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3837 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3838
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003839- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3840 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003841 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003842 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3843
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003844- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3845 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3846 use files" uninstall option).
3847
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003848- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3849
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003850- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3851 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3852
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003853- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3854 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3855 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3856
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003857- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3858 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3859 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3860 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3861 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003862 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3863 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3864 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003865
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003866- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003867 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003868 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3869 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3870 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3871 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3872 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3873 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3874 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3875 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3876 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3877 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3878 work around.
3879
3880- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3881 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3882 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3883 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3884 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3885 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3886 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3887 specified with O_CREAT too).
3888
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003889Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003890----
3891
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003892- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003893
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003894- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3895 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3896 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3897
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003898- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3899 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3900 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3901
3902- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3903 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3904 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3905 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3906 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3907 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3908 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3909 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003910
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003911- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3912 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3913 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003914
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003915- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3916 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3917 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3918 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3919 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003920
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003921- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3922 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3923 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003924
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003925- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3926 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003927
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003928- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3929 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3930 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3931 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3932 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003933
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003934- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3935 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3936 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3937
3938- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3939 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3940 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003941
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003942- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3943 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3944 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3945 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003946 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003947
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003948- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3949 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003950
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003951- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3952 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003953
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003954- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003955 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003956 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3957 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003958
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003959
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003960What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003961===============================
3962
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003963*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3964
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003965Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003966--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003967
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003968- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3969 with a custom metaclass.
3970
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003971Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003972-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003973
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003974- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3975 are proxies.
3976
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003977Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003978-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003979
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003980- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3981 very short strings.
3982
3983- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3984 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3985 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3986 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3987 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3988
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003989Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003990-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003991
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003992- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3993 close or delete time).
3994
3995- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3996 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3997
3998- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3999
4000- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004001 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004002
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004003Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004004-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004005
4006Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004007-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004008
4009C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004010-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004011
4012New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004013-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004014
4015Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004016-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004017
4018Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004019-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004020
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004021- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4022
4023- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4024 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4025
4026- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4027 deleted at process exit time.
4028
4029- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4030 in backslash.
4031
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004032Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004033----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004034
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004035- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4036 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4037 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4038
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004039
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004040What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004041===========================
4042
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004043*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4044
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004045Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004046--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004047
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004048- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4049 been extensively updated. See
4050
4051 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4052
4053 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4054
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004055- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4056 deleted!
4057
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004058- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4059 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4060 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4061 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4062 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4063
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004064- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4065
4066 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4067 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4068
4069 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4070 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4071 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4072 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4073 supported anyway.
4074
4075 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4076 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4077
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004078- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4079 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4080 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4081 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4082 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004083
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004084- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4085 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4086 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4087
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004088Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004089-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004090
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004091- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4092 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4093 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4094 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4095 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4096 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004097 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4098 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4099 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4100 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004101
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004102- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4103 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4104 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4105
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004106Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004107-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004108
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004109- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4110
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004111Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004112-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004113
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004114- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4115 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4116 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4117 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4118 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4119 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4120
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004121- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4122
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004123- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4124
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004125- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4126
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004127- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4128 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4129 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4130
4131- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4132
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004133Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004134-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004135
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004136- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4137 off a search on Google.
4138
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004139Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004140-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004141
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004142- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4143 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4144 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4145 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4146 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4147 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4148 other platforms should do likewise.
4149
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004150- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4151 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4152 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4153
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004154C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004155-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004156
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004157- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4158 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4159 producing key-value pairs.
4160
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004161- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004162 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004163 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4164 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4165 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4166 previously went unchallenged.
4167
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004168New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004169-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004170
4171Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004172-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004173
4174Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004175-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004176
4177Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004178----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004179
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004180- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4181 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004182
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004183- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4184 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4185 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4186 home.
4187
4188
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004189What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004190===========================
4191
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004192*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4193
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004194Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004195--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004196
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004197- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4198 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004199
4200 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004201 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004202
4203 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4204 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004205 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004206 This needs to be documented.
4207
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004208- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4209 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4210
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004211- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4212 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4213 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4214
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004215- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4216 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4217
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004218- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4219 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4220 class forbids it).
4221
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004222- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4223 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4224 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4225
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004226- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4227
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004228Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004229-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004230
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004231- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4232 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004233 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004234
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004235- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4236 (like 1 + '').
4237
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004238Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004239-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004240
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004241- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4242 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4243 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4244 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004245 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004246 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4247
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004248- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4249 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4250 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4251 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4252
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004253- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4254 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004255 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4256 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4257 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004258
4259- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4260 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004261
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004262- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4263 bytes on its input.
4264
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004265Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004266-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004267
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004268- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004269 convenience function.
4270
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004271- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4272 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4273 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004274 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4275 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4276 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4277 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4278 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4279 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004280
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004281- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4282 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4283 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4284 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4285
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004286- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4287 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4288 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4289
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004290- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4291 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4292 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4293 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4294
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004295- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4296 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004297 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004298 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4299 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4300 new -l and -e options.
4301
4302- statcache is now deprecated.
4303
4304- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4305 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004306 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004307 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4308 time properly taken into account.
4309
4310- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4311 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4312 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4313 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4314
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004315Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004316-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004317
4318Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004319-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004320
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004321- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4322 is built with libdb3 if available.
4323
4324- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4325
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004326C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004327-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004328
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004329- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4330 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4331 PySequence_Size().
4332
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004333- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4334
4335- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4336 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4337 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4338
4339- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4340 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4341
4342- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4343 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4344
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004345New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004346-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004347
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004348- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4349 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4350
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004351- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4352 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4353
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004354- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4355
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004356Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004357-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004358
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004359- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4360 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4361
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004362Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004363-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004364
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004365Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004366----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004367
4368- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4369 removed completely in the next release.
4370
4371- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4372 OSX.
4373
4374- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4375 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4376
4377- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4378
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004379
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004380What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004381===========================
4382
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004383*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4384
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004385Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004386--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004387
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004388- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004389 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004390 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004391 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4392 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004393 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4394 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004395 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4396 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004397
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004398- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4399 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4400
4401- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4402 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4403
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004404Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004405-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004406
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004407- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4408 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4409 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4410 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4411 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4412 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4413 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4414 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4415
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004416- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4417 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4418 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4419 example).
4420
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004421- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004422 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004423 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004424 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004425
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004426- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4427 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4428 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004429 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004430
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004431- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4432 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4433 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4434 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4435 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4436 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4437
4438 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4439
4440 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4441
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004442Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004443-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004444
4445- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4446
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004447- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4448
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004449- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4450 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004451
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004452- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4453 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4454 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4455 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4456 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4457 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004458 attributes.
4459
4460- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4461 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4462 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004463
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004464- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4465 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4466 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004467
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004468- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4469 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4470 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004471 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4472 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4473
4474- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4475 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004476
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004477Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004478-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004479
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004480- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4481 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4482
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004483- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4484 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4485 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4486 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4487
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004488- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4489 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4490 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4491 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4492
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004493 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4494 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4495 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4496 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4497 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4498 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4499 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4500 without losing information).
4501
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004502- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004503 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4504 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4505 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4506 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4507 module).
4508
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004509 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004510 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4511 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4512 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4513 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004514
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004515- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004516 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4517 encoding.
4518
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004519- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4520 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4521
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004522- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004523 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4524
4525- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4526 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4527 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4528 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4529
4530- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4531
4532- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4533 ON, and OFF.
4534
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004535- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4536 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4537
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004538Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004539-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004540
4541- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4542 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4543 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004544
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004545- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4546 been added: -X and -E.
4547
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004548Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004549-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004550
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004551- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4552 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4553
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004554C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004555-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004556
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004557- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4558 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4559 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4560 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4561 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4562
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004563- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4564 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4565 as long) arguments.
4566
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004567- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4568 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4569 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4570 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4571 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4572 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4573
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004574- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4575 input.
4576
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004577New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004578-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004579
4580Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004581-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004582
4583Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004584-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004585
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004586- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4587 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4588 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4589
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004590- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4591 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4592 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004593 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004594
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004595 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4596 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4597 import signal
4598 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004599
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004600 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004601 while 1:
4602 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004603 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004604 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4605 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4606 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4607 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004608
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004609
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004610What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4611===========================
4612
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004613*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4614
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004615Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004616--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004617
4618- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4619 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4620 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4621
4622- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4623 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4624 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4625 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4626 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4627 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4628 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004629
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004630- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004631 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004632 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4633 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4634 associate a docstring with a property.
4635
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004636- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4637 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4638 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4639 other built-in object types.
4640
4641- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4642 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4643 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4644 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4645 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4646
4647- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4648 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4649
4650- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4651 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004652 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004653 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4654 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4655 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4656 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4657 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4658
4659- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4660 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4661 class.
4662
4663- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4664 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4665 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4666 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4667
4668- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4669 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4670 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4671 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4672
4673- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4674 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4675
4676- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4677 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4678 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4679 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4680 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004681 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004682 with the same value as s.
4683
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004684- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4685
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004686Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004687----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004688
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004689- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4690
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004691- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4692 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4693 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4694 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4695 objects.
4696
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004697- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4698 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004699 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4700 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4701
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004702- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4703 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4704 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4705
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004706Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004707-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004708
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004709- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4710 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4711 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4712 by the instances.
4713
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004714- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4715 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4716 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4717
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004718- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4719 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4720 before the entire comparison is complete.
4721
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004722- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4723 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4724 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4725
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004726- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4727 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4728 getwriter().
4729
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004730- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4731 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4732
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004733- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004734 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4735 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4736
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004737- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4738 iterable object.
4739
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004740- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4741 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004742
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004743- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4744 authentication.
4745
4746- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4747 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004748
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004749- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004750 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4751 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4752 a sample driver.)
4753
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004754Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004755-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004756
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004757- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4758 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4759 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4760 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4761 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4762 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4763 kernel has large file support.
4764
4765- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4766 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4767 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4768 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4769 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4770
4771- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4772 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4773 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4774
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004775C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004776-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004777
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004778- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4779 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4780
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004781New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004782-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004783
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004784- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4785 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4786
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004787Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004788-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004789
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004790- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4791 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4792 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4793 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4794 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4795
4796- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4797 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4798 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4799 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4800
4801- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4802 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4803
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004804Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004805-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004806
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004807- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004808 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4809 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004810
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004811
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004812What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4813===========================
4814
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004815*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4816
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004817Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004818----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004819
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004820- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4821 big to represent as a C double.
4822
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004823- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4824 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4825 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4826 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4827 restriction).
4828
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004829- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4830 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4831 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4832 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4833 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4834
4835 >>> dir([])
4836 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4837 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4838 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4839 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4840 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4841 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4842 'reverse', 'sort']
4843
4844 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4845
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004846- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004847 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4848 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4849 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4850 OverflowError exception.
4851
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004852- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004853 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004854 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4855 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4856 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4857 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4858 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004859 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004860 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4861 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4862
4863 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4864 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4865 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4866 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004867
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004868- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004869 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4870 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4871 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4872 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4873 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4874 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4875 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4876 once it is created.
4877
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004878- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4879 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4880 (key, value) pairs.
4881
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004882- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004883 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4884 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4885
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004886- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4887 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4888 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4889 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4890 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004891
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004892- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004893 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4894 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4895
4896 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4897
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004898- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004899 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4900
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004901Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004902-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004903
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004904- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004905 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4906 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004907
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004908- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4909 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4910 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4911 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4912 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4913 in this area anymore).
4914
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004915- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4916 threading.Timer.
4917
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004918- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4919 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4920
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004921- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004922 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4923
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004924- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004925 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4926 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4927 converted to Python longs.
4928
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004929- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004930 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4931
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004932- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4933 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4934 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4935
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004936Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004937-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004938
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004939- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4940 division operators as per PEP 238.
4941
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004942Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004943-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004944
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004945- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4946 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4947 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4948 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4949
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004950C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004951-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004952
4953- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004954
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004955- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4956 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004957 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004958
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004959 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4960 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004961 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004962 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004963
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004964- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004965 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4966 module:
4967
4968 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004969
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004970 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4971 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004972
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004973 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4974 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004975
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004976 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4977
4978 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4979
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004980- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004981 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4982 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4983 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004984
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004985New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004986-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004987
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004988- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4989 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4990 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4991 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4992 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004993
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004994Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004995-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004996
4997Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004998-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004999
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005000- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5001 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5002 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5003 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005004 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5005 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5006 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5007 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5008 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005009
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005010- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005011 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5012
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005013
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005014What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5015===========================
5016
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005017*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5018
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005019Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005020-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005021
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005022- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5023 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5024
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005025- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5026 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5027 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005028
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005029- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5030 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5031 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5032 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005033
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005034- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5035
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005036- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005037
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005038Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005039-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005040
5041- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005042 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005043 the module docstring for details.
5044
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005045Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005046-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005047
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005048- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005049 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5050 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5051 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005052
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005053- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5054 Nick Mathewson.
5055
5056Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005057----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005058
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005059- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5060 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5061 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5062 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5063 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5064 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5065 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5066 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5067
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005068- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5069 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5070 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5071 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5072
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005073- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5074 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5075 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5076 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5077 come a long way).
5078
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005079- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5080 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5081 write filters for these warnings).
5082
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005083- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5084 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5085 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5086 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5087 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5088
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005089- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5090 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5091 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5092 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5093 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5094 older distribution.
5095
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005096Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005097-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005098
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005099- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5100 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005101 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005102
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005103- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5104 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5105 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5106
5107- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5108
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005109- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5110
5111- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5112
5113- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5114
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005115- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005116
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005117- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5118
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005119New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005120-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005121
5122C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005123-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005124
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005125- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5126 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5127 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5128 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5129 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5130 against buffer overruns.
5131
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005132- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005133 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5134 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005135 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5136 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5137 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5138
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005139- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5140 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5141 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5142 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5143 deprecated.
5144
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005145Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005146-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005147
5148- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5149 relevant is found.
5150
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005151
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005152What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005153===========================
5154
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005155*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5156
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005157Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005158----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005159
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005160- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5161 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5162 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5163 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5164 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5165 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5166 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5167 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005168 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005169 repaired.
5170
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005171- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005172 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005173 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5174 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5175 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5176 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5177 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5178 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5179 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5180 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5181
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005182- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5183 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5184 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5185 leading BMO character).
5186
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005187- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5188 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5189 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5190
5191 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5192 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5193 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005194
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005195 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5196 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5197 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5198 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5199 for various simple to use conversions.
5200
5201 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5202 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5203
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005204 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5205 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5206 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5207 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5208 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5209 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5210 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5211 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5212 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5213 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5214 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5215 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5216 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5217 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5218 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005219
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005220- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5221 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5222 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005223 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005224 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005225
5226 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005227 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5228 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5229 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5230 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5231 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005232 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5233 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005234
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005235 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5236 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5237 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005238 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005239
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005240- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5241 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5242 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5243 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5244 floating arithmetic,
5245
5246 x = 9007199254740992.0
5247 print long(x)
5248
5249 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5250 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5251 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5252 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5253 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5254 functions are of good quality).
5255
5256 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5257 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5258 algorithms to break.
5259
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005260- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5261 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5262 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5263 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5264 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5265 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5266 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5267 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5268 order.
5269
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005270- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5271 operation along the most common code paths.
5272
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005273- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5274 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5275
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005276- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5277 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5278 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5279 {}.update(UserDict())
5280
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005281- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5282 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5283 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5284 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5285 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5286 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5287 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5288 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5289
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005290- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005291 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005292
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005293 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005294 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5295 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005296 join() method of strings
5297 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005298 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5299 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005300 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005301 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005302
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005303- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5304 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5305
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005306- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5307 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5308
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005309- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5310 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5311 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5312 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5313
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005314- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5315 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005316 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005317 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5318 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005319
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005320- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5321
5322
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005323Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005324-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005325
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005326- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005327 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005328 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5329 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5330
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005331- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5332 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5333
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005334- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5335 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5336 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5337 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5338
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005339- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5340 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5341 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5342
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005343- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5344
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005345- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5346
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005347- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5348 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5349 that are still imported into string.py).
5350
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005351- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5352
5353- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5354 Now it does.
5355
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005356- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5357
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005358- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5359 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5360 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5361 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5362 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005363 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5364 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005365
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005366- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5367 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5368 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5369 'help(object)'.
5370
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005371Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005372-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005373
5374- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005375 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005376 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5377 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5378
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005379- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005380 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5381 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005382
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005383C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005384-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005385
5386- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5387 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005388
5389----
5390
5391**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**