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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
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Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10*Release date: DD-MMM-YYYY*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Martin v. Löwis3e501dc2004-06-03 04:03:30 +000015- Unicode objects received two new methods now; iswide() and width(). They
16 query east asian width information according to Unicode TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +000017
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +000018- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
19 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
20
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +000021- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
22
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +000023- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
24 new documentation and modified profiler and bdb modules for more details
25
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +000026- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
27
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +000028- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
29
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +000030- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
31 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
32
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +000033- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
34 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
35 Fixes bug #858016 .
36
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +000037- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
38 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
39 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
40
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +000041- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
42 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
43 improves their performance (about 35%).
44
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +000045- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
46 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
47 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
48
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +000049- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
50 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
51 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
52 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
53
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +000054- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
55 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
56 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
57 length is not known).
58
59- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
60 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +000061 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
62 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +000063 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
64
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +000065- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
66 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
67
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +000068- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
69 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
70 keyword arguments.
71
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +000072- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
73 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
74 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
75
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +000076- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
77 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
78 cases.
79
80- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
81 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
82 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
83 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
84 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
85 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
86 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
87 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
88 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
89 a release build.
90
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +000091- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
92 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
93
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +000094- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +000095 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +000096
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +000097- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
98 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
99 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
100 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
101 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
102 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
103 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
104 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
105 destroyed.
106
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000107- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
108 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
109 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
110 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
111 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
112 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
113 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
114 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
115
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000116- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
117 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
118 character other than a space.
119
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000120- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
121 by the function object or by the method object, the function
122 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
123 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
124 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
125 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
126 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
127 attributes with the same name.
128
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000129- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
130 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
131 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
132 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
133 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
134 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
135 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
136 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
137 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
138 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
139 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
140 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
141 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
142 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000143
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000144- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
145 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
146 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
147 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
148 This has been repaired.
149
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000150- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
151
152- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
153
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000154- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
155 over a sequence.
156
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000157- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000158 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000159
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000160- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
161
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000162- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
163 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
164 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
165 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
166 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
167 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
168 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
169 records with equal keys is unchanged).
170
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000171- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
172 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
173 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
174
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000175- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
176 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
177 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
178 freelist.
179
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000180- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
181 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
182
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000183- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
184 number.
185
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000186- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
187 a TypeError exception.
188
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000189- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
190 820195.
191
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000192- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
193 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
194 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
195
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000196- str and unicode builtin types now have rsplit() method that is
197 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
198 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +0000199
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +0000200- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
201 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
202 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
203
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000204- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
205 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000206 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000207
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000208- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +0000209 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
210 the first call.
211
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000212
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000213Extension modules
214-----------------
215
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +0000216- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
217
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +0000218- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
219 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
220
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +0000221- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
222 fewer false positives.
223
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +0000224- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
225 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
226
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +0000227- Bug #920575: A problem that _locale module segfaults on
228 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
229
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +0000230- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
231 scheme has been updated the same as for list objects. The improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +0000232 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
233 Also, array.extend() now accepts any iterable argument for repeated
234 appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +0000235
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +0000236- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
237 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
238 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
239 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
240
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +0000241- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
242 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
243 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
244 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
245 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
246 #897625.
247
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +0000248- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
249 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
250
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +0000251- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
252 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
253 and pops on either side of the deque.
254
255- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
256 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
257
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +0000258- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
259 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
260 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
261 other functions that expect a function argument.
262
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +0000263- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
264
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000265- os.getsid was added.
266
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +0000267- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
268 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
269 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
270
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +0000271- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
272
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +0000273- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
274
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +0000275- readline.clear_history was added.
276
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +0000277- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
278
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +0000279- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
280
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +0000281- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
282
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +0000283- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
284
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +0000285- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
286
287- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
288
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +0000289- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
290
291- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
292
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000293- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
294 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
295 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
296
297- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
298 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
299 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
300 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
301 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
302 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
303 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
304
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +0000305- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
306 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
307 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
308 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000309
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000310- itertools now has a new function, tee() which produces two independent
311 iterators from a single iterable.
312
313- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
314 of raising a TypeError exception.
315
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +0000316- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
317 as parameter.
318
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000319Library
320-------
321
Martin v. Löwiseac324b2004-06-03 09:18:35 +0000322- asyncore.loop now has repeat count parameter that defaults to infinity.
323
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000324- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
325 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
326 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
327
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +0000328- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
329 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
330 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
331
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +0000332- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
333
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +0000334- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
335
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +0000336- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
337 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
338
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +0000339- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
340 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
341 type pattern with the same value exists.
342
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +0000343- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
344 when run from the command prompt).
345
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000346- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
347 not taken into consideration when caching value.
348
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +0000349- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
350 default sort).
351
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +0000352- Added global runctx function to profile module
353
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +0000354- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
355
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +0000356- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
357
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +0000358- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
359
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +0000360- The encodings package will now applies codec name aliases
361 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
362 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
363 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
364 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
365 accordingly.
366
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +0000367- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
368 decoding standards.
369
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +0000370- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
371 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
372 called for all requests.
373
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +0000374- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
375 they are passed to the compiler.
376
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +0000377- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
378 indent, width and depth.
379
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +0000380- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
381 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
382
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +0000383- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
384 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
385
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +0000386- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
387
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +0000388- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
389
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000390- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
391
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +0000392- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
393 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
394
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +0000395- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
396 for better performance
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +0000397
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +0000398- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
399 a string).
400
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +0000401- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
402
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +0000403- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
404
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +0000405- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
406
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +0000407- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
408
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +0000409- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
410 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
411 list of fieldnames.
412
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +0000413- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
414 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
415
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +0000416- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
417
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +0000418- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
419 empty lists.
420
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +0000421- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
422 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
423 and shelves.
424
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +0000425- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
426 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
427
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000428- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +0000429 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
430 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000431
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +0000432- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
433 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +0000434 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +0000435
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000436- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +0000437 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
438 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
439
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000440- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
441 and removed in Py2.4.
442
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +0000443- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
444
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +0000445- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
446
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000447Tools/Demos
448-----------
449
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +0000450- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
451 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
452
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +0000453- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
454
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +0000455- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
456 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
457 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
458 destination in situations where both files are given.
459
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +0000460- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
461 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
462 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
463 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
464
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +0000465- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
466
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +0000467- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
468 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
469 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
470 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
471 now.
472
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000473- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
474 in effect
475
476- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
477 C-c C-h
478
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +0000479- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
480 -d option was given.
481
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000482Build
483-----
484
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +0000485- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
486 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
487
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +0000488- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
489 removed.
490
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +0000491- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
492 supported (see PEP 11).
493
494- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
495
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +0000496- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
497
498- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
499 (see PEP 11).
500
501- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
502 sizeof(char) must be 1.
503
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000504C API
505-----
506
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +0000507- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
508 generator objects.
509
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000510- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
511 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +0000512 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
513 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000514
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +0000515- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
516 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
517
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +0000518- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
519 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
520 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
521 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
522 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
523
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +0000524- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
525 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
526 about 10% faster.
527
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +0000528- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
529 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
530
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +0000531- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
532 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
533 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
534 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
535
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000536New platforms
537-------------
538
539Tests
540-----
541
542Windows
543-------
544
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +0000545- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
546 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
547 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
548 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
549
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +0000550- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
551 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
552 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
553
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000554Mac
555----
556
557
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000558What's New in Python 2.3 final?
559===============================
560
561*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
562
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000563IDLE
564----
565
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +0000566- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
567 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
568 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
569 context-menu actions.
570
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000571- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
572 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
573 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
574 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
575 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
576 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
577 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
578 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
579 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
580
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000581
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000582What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
583=============================================
584
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +0000585*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000586
587Core and builtins
588-----------------
589
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000590- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000591 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000592 comment at the end are still unsupported.
593
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000594Extension modules
595-----------------
596
597- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
598 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
599 than once. This has been fixed.
600
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +0000601- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
602 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
603 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
604 call.
605
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000606- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
607
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000608Library
609-------
610
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000611- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
612 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
613
614- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
615 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
616 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
617 restored.
618
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000619IDLE
620----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000621
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000622- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000623
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000624Build
625-----
626
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000627- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
628 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
629
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000630C API
631-----
632
633Windows
634-------
635
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +0000636- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
637 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
638
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000639- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
640
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000641Mac
642---
643
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000644- Various fixes to pimp.
645
646- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
647
648- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
649 more problems than it solves.
650
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000651
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000652What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
653=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000654
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +0000655*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
656
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000657Core and builtins
658-----------------
659
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +0000660- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
661 by sys.setcheckinterval().
662
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000663- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
664 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000665 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000666
667- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
668 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
669 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000670 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000671
672- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
673 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000674
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000675- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
676 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
677 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
678
679- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000680 770247.
681
682- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000683
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000684Extension modules
685-----------------
686
687- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
688 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
689
690- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
691
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000692- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
693
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +0000694- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
695 contained within the _strptime module.
696
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000697- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
698 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
699
700- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000701 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
702
703- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
704 the find_class attribute, if present.
705
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000706- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000707
708 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
709 (SF bug 763298).
710
711 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +0000712 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
713 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
714 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000715
716 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
717
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000718Library
719-------
720
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000721- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
722
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +0000723- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
724 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
725 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
726 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
727 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
728 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
729 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
730 or Tester().
731
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000732- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
733 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
734 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
735 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
736 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
737 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
738 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
739 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
740 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +0000741
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000742 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +0000743
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +0000744- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
745 weren't before was an oversight.
746
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000747- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
748 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
749
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +0000750- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
751 when there are no lines.
752
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +0000753- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
754 which could occur with Tk 8.4
755
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000756- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
757 to child processes.
758
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000759- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
760
761- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
762
763- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
764 xmlrpclib.
765
766- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
767 responses.
768
769- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
770 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
771
772- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
773 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
774 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
775
776- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
777 used as patterns.
778
779- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
780 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
781 than Tk 8.3.
782
783- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
784
785- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000786
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000787Tools/Demos
788-----------
789
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000790- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
791
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +0000792- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
793
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000794- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000795
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000796Build
797-----
798
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000799- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
800
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000801- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
802
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000803- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
804 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000805
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000806- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
807 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
808 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000809
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000810C API
811-----
812
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000813- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
814 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
815
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000816Windows
817-------
818
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000819- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
820 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
821 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
822 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
823 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
824 Python exception ::
825
826 thread.error: can't start new thread
827
828 is raised now.
829
830- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
831 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
832 instead of from DLL teardown.
833
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000834Mac
835---
836
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000837- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +0000838 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000839 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
840 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
841 the executable in the bundle.
842
843- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000844
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +0000845- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
846
847- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
848 on Panther.
849
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000850What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
851================================
852
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +0000853*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000854
855Core and builtins
856-----------------
857
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +0000858- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
859 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
860 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
861 with the -i option.
862
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +0000863- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
864 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
865
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000866- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
867 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
868
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +0000869- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
870 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
871 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
872 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
873 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
874 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
875 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
876 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
877 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
878 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
879 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
880 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
881 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +0000882
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000883- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
884 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
885 embedded in a lambda expression.
886
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +0000887- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
888 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
889 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
890 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
891 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
892
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000893- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
894 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
895 matches the restriction on classic classes.
896
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +0000897- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
898 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
899
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +0000900- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
901 It's writable again.
902
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000903- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
904 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
905 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000906 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000907
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000908- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
909 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
910 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
911
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000912Extension modules
913-----------------
914
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +0000915- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
916 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
917
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000918- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
919 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
920 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
921 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
922
923- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
924 collection.
925
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +0000926- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
927 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
928 unique within a single program run.
929
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +0000930- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
931 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
932
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +0000933- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
934 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
935
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +0000936- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
937 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +0000938
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +0000939- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
940
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +0000941- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
942 Fixes SF bug #730685.
943
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +0000944- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
945 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
946 for many BSD-derived systems.
947
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000948
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000949Library
950-------
951
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +0000952- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
953 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
954 primary ones:
955
956 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
957 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
958 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
959
960 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
961 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
962 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
963 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
964 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
965 framework features (which doctest lacks).
966
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +0000967- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
968 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
969 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
970 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
971 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
972 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
973 argument.
974
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000975- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
976 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
977 in the archive.
978
979- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
980 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
981
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +0000982- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
983 569574).
984
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000985- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
986 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
987 no more.
988
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000989- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
990 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
991 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
992 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
993 code coverage.
994
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +0000995- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
996 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
997 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000998 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
999 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001000
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001001- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1002 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1003 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001004 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001005
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001006- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1007
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001008- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1009 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1010 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1011 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1012
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001013- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1014 handling.
1015
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001016- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1017 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1018
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001019- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1020 in socket.py.
1021
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001022- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1023
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001024- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1025 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1026 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1027 opener with proxy support.
1028
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001029- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1030
1031- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1032
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001033Tools/Demos
1034-----------
1035
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001036- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1037
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001038- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1039
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001040- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1041 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001042
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001043- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1044 files.
1045
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001046Build
1047-----
1048
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001049- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001050 different root directory.
1051
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001052C API
1053-----
1054
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001055- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1056 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1057 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1058 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1059 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1060 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1061 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1062 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1063 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1064 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1065
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001066- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1067 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1068 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1069 from Python.
1070
1071
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001072New platforms
1073-------------
1074
1075None this time.
1076
1077Tests
1078-----
1079
1080- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1081 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1082
1083Windows
1084-------
1085
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001086- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1087
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001088- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1089 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1090 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1091 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1092 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1093 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1094 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1095 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1096 that's what it's for.
1097
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001098Mac
1099---
1100
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001101- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1102 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1103 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1104 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001105- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1106 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1107- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001108
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001109SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1110------------------------------------
1111
1112430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1113598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1114622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1115661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1116683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1117697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1118713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1119724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1120727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1121729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1122730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1123731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1124732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1125733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1126735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1127740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1128744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1129745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1130747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1131749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1132751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
1133753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
1134755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
1135757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
1136760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
1137
1138
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001139What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
1140================================
1141
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00001142*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001143
1144Core and builtins
1145-----------------
1146
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00001147- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
1148 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
1149
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00001150- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
1151 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
1152 and cannot be strings).
1153
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00001154- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
1155 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
1156 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
1157 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
1158
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00001159- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
1160 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
1161 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
1162 Python itself.
1163
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00001164- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
1165 the referenced object, if it has one.
1166
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00001167- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
1168 the thread started at
1169 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
1170
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00001171- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
1172 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
1173 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
1174 placed on a list index.
1175
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00001176- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
1177 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
1178 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
1179 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
1180
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001181- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
1182 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
1183 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
1184 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
1185 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
1186 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
1187 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
1188
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00001189- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
1190 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
1191 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
1192 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
1193 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
1194
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00001195- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
1196 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00001197
1198- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
1199 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
1200 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
1201 #693195.)
1202
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00001203- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
1204 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001205
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001206- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00001207 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001208 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
1209 interpreter executions, would fail.
1210
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001211- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00001212 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00001213 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001214
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001215Extension modules
1216-----------------
1217
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00001218- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
1219 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
1220 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
1221 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
1222
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00001223- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
1224 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
1225
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00001226- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
1227 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
1228 and Greg Chapman.)
1229
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001230- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
1231 recursively.
1232
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00001233- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00001234 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
1235 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
1236 leaks.
1237
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00001238- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
1239
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00001240- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
1241 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
1242 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
1243 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
1244 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
1245 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
1246 #705836.
1247
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001248- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00001249 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
1250
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00001251- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
1252 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
1253 See SF bug #692416.
1254
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00001255- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
1256 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
1257
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00001258- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
1259 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
1260 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001261
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001262- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00001263 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
1264 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
1265
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00001266- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
1267 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
1268 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
1269 timeouts to work properly.
1270
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001271Library
1272-------
1273
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001274- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
1275 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
1276 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
1277 future release.
1278
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00001279- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
1280 for querying platform dependent features.
1281
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00001282- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00001283
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00001284- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
1285 pickle protocol versions.
1286
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00001287- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
1288 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
1289 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
1290
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00001291- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
1292
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00001293- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
1294 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
1295 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
1296 modules.
1297
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00001298- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
1299 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
1300 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
1301
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001302- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
1303 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
1304
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00001305- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
1306 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
1307 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
1308
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001309- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00001310 MS Office extensions.
1311
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00001312- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
1313 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
1314
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00001315- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
1316 execution speed of expressions and statements.
1317
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001318- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
1319 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
1320 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
1321 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
1322 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
1323 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
1324
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001325- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
1326 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
1327 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001328
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00001329- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
1330 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
1331 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
1332
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00001333- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
1334
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00001335- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
1336 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
1337 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
1338
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001339Tools/Demos
1340-----------
1341
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00001342- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
1343 See the module docstring for details.
1344
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001345Build
1346-----
1347
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00001348- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
1349 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001350
1351C API
1352-----
1353
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001354- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
1355
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00001356- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
1357 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
1358 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
1359
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001360- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
1361 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001362
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001363 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
1364 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
1365 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00001366
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00001367- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00001368 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
1369
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00001370- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
1371 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
1372 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001373
1374New platforms
1375-------------
1376
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001377None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001378
1379Tests
1380-----
1381
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00001382- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
1383 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001384
1385Windows
1386-------
1387
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00001388- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
1389 function.
1390
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00001391- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
1392 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001393
1394Mac
1395---
1396
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001397- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
1398 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00001399
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00001400- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
1401 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001402
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00001403- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
1404 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
1405 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001406
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001407- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00001408 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
1409 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001410
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001411- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
1412 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001413
1414
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001415What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
1416=================================
1417
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001418*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001419
1420Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001421-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001422
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00001423- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
1424 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
1425 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
1426
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00001427- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
1428 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
1429 (SF patch #664376.)
1430
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001431- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
1432 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
1433 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
1434 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
1435 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
1436 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00001437 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001438
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001439- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
1440 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
1441 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
1442 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001443 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001444
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00001445- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
1446 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
1447 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
1448 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
1449 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
1450 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
1451 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
1452 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
1453 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
1454 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
1455 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
1456
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00001457- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
1458 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
1459 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
1460 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
1461 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
1462 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
1463
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00001464- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
1465 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
1466
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00001467- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
1468 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
1469 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
1470 case.)
1471
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00001472- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
1473 passed as unicode strings.
1474
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00001475- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
1476 See SF bug #683467.
1477
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00001478- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
1479 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
1480
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00001481- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
1482
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00001483- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
1484
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00001485- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
1486 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
1487 arguments.
1488
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00001489- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
1490 See SF bug #667147.
1491
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001492- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001493 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001494 See SF bug #676155.
1495
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001496- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001497 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001498 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
1499 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
1500 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
1501 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
1502 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
1503 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001504
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001505Extension modules
1506-----------------
1507
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001508- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
1509 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1510 tp_as_number pointer.
1511
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001512- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
1513 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
1514 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
1515 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
1516 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
1517
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001518- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
1519
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00001520- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
1521
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001522- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00001523 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001524 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
1525 patch #678531.)
1526
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00001527- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
1528 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
1529
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00001530- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
1531 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
1532
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00001533- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
1534
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00001535- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
1536 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
1537 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
1538
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001539- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
1540
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001541- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
1542 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
1543
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001544- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001545
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001546- datetime changes:
1547
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00001548 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
1549
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00001550 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
1551 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
1552 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
1553 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
1554 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
1555 now.
1556
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001557 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001558 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
1559 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001560
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001561 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001562 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001563 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
1564 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
1565 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
1566 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001567
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001568 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
1569 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
1570 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001571 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
1572
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001573 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
1574 by a later example coded by Guido.
1575
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001576 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001577 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
1578 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
1579 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001580 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
1581 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
1582
1583 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
1584 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
1585 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
1586 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
1587 tzinfo subclass instance.
1588
1589 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
1590 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
1591 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
1592 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
1593 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
1594 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
1595 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
1596 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001597
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001598 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
1599 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
1600 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
1601 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
1602 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001603 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
1604
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001605 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001606
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001607 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
1608 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
1609 as a naive datetime object.
1610
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00001611 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
1612 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
1613 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
1614
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00001615 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
1616 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
1617 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
1618 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
1619 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
1620 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
1621 comparison.
1622
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001623 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
1624 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
1625 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
1626 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001627 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001628
1629 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001630
1631 and ::
1632
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001633 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
1634
1635 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
1636 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
1637 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
1638 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
1639
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00001640 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
1641 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
1642 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
1643 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
1644 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
1645
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001646 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
1647 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00001648 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
1649 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001650
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001651Library
1652-------
1653
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001654- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
1655 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
1656
1657- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
1658 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
1659 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
1660 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
1661 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
1662 See PEP 307 for details.
1663
1664- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
1665 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
1666
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001667- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
1668 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001669 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001670 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
1671 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001672 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001673
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00001674- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
1675 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
1676
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001677- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
1678 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
1679 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
1680
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00001681- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
1682
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00001683- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
1684 exception.
1685
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00001686- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
1687 class.
1688
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00001689- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
1690 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
1691 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
1692
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00001693- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
1694 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
1695
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001696- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00001697 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
1698 See SF bug #659228.
1699
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00001700- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
1701 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
1702 See SF patch #651082.
1703
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00001704- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001705
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00001706- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
1707 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
1708
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001709- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001710 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001711
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00001712- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
1713 DOS paths from other platforms.
1714
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001715Tools/Demos
1716-----------
1717
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001718- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
1719 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
1720 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
1721 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
1722 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
1723 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
1724 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
1725 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
1726 example:
1727
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00001728 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
1729 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001730
1731 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
1732
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001733
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001734Build
1735-----
1736
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001737- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
1738 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
1739 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001740 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
1741
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001742 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
1743
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00001744- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
1745 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
1746 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
1747 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
1748 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
1749 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
1750 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
1751 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
1752 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
1753
1754- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
1755 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
1756 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
1757 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
1758
1759- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
1760 from the Tools/scripts directory.
1761
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001762C API
1763-----
1764
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001765- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
1766 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00001767
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001768- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
1769 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1770 tp_as_number pointer.
1771
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00001772- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
1773 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
1774 (SF #681367)
1775
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00001776- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
1777 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
1778 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
1779 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00001780
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001781Tests
1782-----
1783
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00001784- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001785 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
1786 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
1787 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
1788 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
1789 pydoc.)
1790
1791- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
1792
1793- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001794
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001795Windows
1796-------
1797
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001798- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
1799 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
1800 time).
1801
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00001802- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
1803 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
1804
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001805- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
1806 release without strong cryptography.
1807
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001808- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001809 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001810
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001811- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
1812 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
1813
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001814Mac
1815---
1816
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001817- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
1818 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001819
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00001820- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
1821 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
1822 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001823
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001824- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
1825 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001826
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001827- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
1828 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
1829 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
1830 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001831
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001832- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00001833 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
1834 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
1835 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001836
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001837
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001838What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001839=================================
1840
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00001841*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001842
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001843Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001844--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001845
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00001846- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
1847
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001848- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
1849 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001850 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001851 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001852 a different meaning than before.
1853
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001854- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001855 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001856 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001857
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001858- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001859 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001860 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001861
1862- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
1863 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
1864 and deallocation.
1865
1866- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
1867 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
1868
1869- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
1870 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
1871 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
1872 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
1873 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
1874
1875- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
1876 now detected by the garbage collector.
1877
1878- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
1879 [SF bug 519621]
1880
1881- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
1882 identifier.
1883
1884- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
1885 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
1886 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
1887 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
1888 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
1889 [SF bug 563060]
1890
1891- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
1892 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
1893 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
1894 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
1895 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
1896
1897- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
1898 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
1899 not called. [SF bug #537450]
1900
1901- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
1902
1903- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
1904 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
1905 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
1906 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
1907 state of the slots would be lost.)
1908
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001909Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001910-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001911
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001912- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001913 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
1914 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
1915 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
1916 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001917 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
1918 Jython 2.1.
1919
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001920- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001921 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001922 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
1923 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
1924 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
1925 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
1926 these, see PEP 302.
1927
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001928- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
1929 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
1930 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
1931
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00001932- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
1933 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
1934 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
1935
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00001936- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
1937 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
1938 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
1939
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00001940- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
1941 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
1942 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
1943 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
1944 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
1945 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
1946 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
1947 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
1948 releases or implementations.
1949
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001950- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00001951 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
1952 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001953
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00001954- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
1955 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
1956
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00001957- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
1958 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
1959 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
1960
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00001961- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
1962 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
1963
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001964- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
1965 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001966 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
1967 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001968
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00001969- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
1970 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
1971 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
1972 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
1973 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
1974
1975 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
1976 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
1977 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
1978 pattern.
1979
1980 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
1981 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
1982 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
1983 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
1984
1985 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
1986 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
1987 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
1988 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
1989 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
1990 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
1991
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00001992- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
1993 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
1994 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
1995 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
1996 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
1997 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
1998 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
1999 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002000
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002001- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2002 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2003 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2004 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2005 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002006 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2007 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2008 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2009 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2010 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2011 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2012 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002013
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002014- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2015 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2016
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002017- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2018 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2019 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2020 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2021 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2022 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2023 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2024 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2025 to Zack Weinberg!
2026
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002027- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2028 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2029 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2030 type. This has been fixed now.
2031
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002032- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2033 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2034 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2035
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002036- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2037 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2038 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2039 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2040 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2041 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2042 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2043 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002044 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002045
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002046- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2047 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2048 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002049
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002050- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2051 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2052 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2053 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2054 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2055 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2056 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2057 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002058 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002059 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2060 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2061
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002062- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2063 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2064 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2065 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2066 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2067 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2068 this.)
2069
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002070- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2071 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002072 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002073 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002074 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2075 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002076 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2077 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002078
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002079- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2080 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2081 currently running.
2082
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002083- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2084 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2085 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2086 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2087
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002088- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2089 as directory names.
2090
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002091- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2092 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2093
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002094- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2095 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2096
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002097- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002098 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2099 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002100
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002101- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2102 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2103 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2104 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2105 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2106
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002107- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2108 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2109 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2110 removed.
2111
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002112- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2113 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2114 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2115
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002116- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2117 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2118 to __debug__.
2119
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002120- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2121 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2122 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2123
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002124- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2125 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2126 deprecated now.
2127
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002128- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2129 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2130 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002131
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002132- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
2133 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
2134 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
2135 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
2136 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00002137
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00002138- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
2139 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
2140
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002141- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
2142 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
2143 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002144 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002145 is backward compatible.
2146
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00002147- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
2148 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
2149 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
2150 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
2151 could access a pointer to freed memory.
2152
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00002153- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
2154 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
2155 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
2156 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
2157 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
2158 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002159
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00002160- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
2161 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
2162
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002163- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
2164 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
2165
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002166- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
2167 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
2168 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
2169 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
2170 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
2171
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00002172- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
2173 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
2174 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
2175
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002176- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00002177 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
2178
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00002179- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
2180 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
2181 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00002182
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00002183- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
2184 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
2185
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00002186- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
2187 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
2188 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
2189
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00002190- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
2191
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002192Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002193-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002194
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00002195- Added three operators to the operator module:
2196 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
2197 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
2198 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
2199
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00002200- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
2201
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002202- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
2203 archives.
2204
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002205- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
2206 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
2207 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
2208
2209 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
2210
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002211- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
2212 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
2213 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00002214 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002215
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00002216- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
2217 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
2218 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
2219 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002220 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
2221 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
2222 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
2223 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00002224
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00002225- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
2226 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00002227
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00002228- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
2229
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00002230- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
2231 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
2232
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00002233- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
2234 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
2235 supported.
2236
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00002237- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
2238
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00002239- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
2240 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00002241
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00002242- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
2243 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
2244
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002245- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
2246
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002247- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
2248 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
2249
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00002250- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
2251 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
2252 functions but callable type objects.
2253
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002254- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002255 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002256 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002257
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00002258- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
2259 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00002260
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00002261- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
2262 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00002263
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00002264- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
2265 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
2266 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
2267 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
2268
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00002269- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
2270 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00002271
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00002272- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
2273 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
2274 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
2275 and __imul__.
2276
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00002277- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00002278 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
2279 is called.
2280
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00002281- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
2282 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
2283 interpreter was compiled.
2284
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002285- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
2286 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
2287 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002288 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002289 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
2290 1, not 2.
2291
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00002292- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
2293 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
2294 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
2295 limit.
2296
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00002297- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
2298 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
2299 bug #623464.
2300
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00002301- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
2302 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
2303 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
2304 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
2305
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002306Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002307-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002308
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00002309- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
2310
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00002311- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
2312 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
2313 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
2314 with Python 2.3a2.
2315
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00002316- os.path exposes getctime.
2317
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002318- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002319 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002320 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002321 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002322 unit tests of floating point results.
2323
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00002324- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
2325 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
2326 has been increased.
2327
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002328- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
2329 executed.
2330
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00002331- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
2332 postinstallation script.
2333
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00002334- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
2335 test the current module.
2336
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002337- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00002338 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
2339 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
2340 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
2341 this behavior needs to be controlled.
2342
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002343- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002344 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002345 Ward's Optik package.
2346
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002347- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
2348 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
2349 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
2350 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
2351
2352- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
2353 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002354 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002355
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00002356- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
2357 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
2358 shelf are binary pickles.
2359
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00002360- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
2361 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
2362
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00002363- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
2364 modules are iterators now.
2365
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00002366- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
2367 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
2368 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
2369 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
2370 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
2371 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002372
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00002373- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
2374 with their entity value.
2375
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00002376- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
2377
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002378- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
2379 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00002380
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002381- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
2382 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002383 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00002384
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00002385- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
2386 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
2387 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
2388 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
2389 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
2390 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
2391 main():
2392
2393 import locale
2394 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
2395
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00002396- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
2397 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
2398
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00002399- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
2400 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
2401 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
2402 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
2403 to the new standard.
2404
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00002405- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
2406 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
2407 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
2408 an extension to the database.
2409
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002410- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
2411 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
2412 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
2413 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00002414 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002415
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002416- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002417 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002418
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002419- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
2420 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
2421 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
2422 bounded integers.
2423
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00002424- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
2425 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
2426 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
2427 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
2428 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
2429 in existence.
2430
2431 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
2432 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
2433 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
2434 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
2435 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
2436 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
2437
2438 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
2439 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
2440 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
2441 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
2442
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00002443- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
2444 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
2445 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
2446
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00002447- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
2448
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002449- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
2450 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
2451 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
2452 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
2453
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00002454- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
2455 argument.
2456
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00002457- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
2458 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
2459 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
2460 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
2461 [SF patch 560794].
2462
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002463- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
2464 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
2465 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002466 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
2467 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
2468 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002469
2470- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
2471 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00002472
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00002473- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
2474 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
2475 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
2476 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00002477
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00002478- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
2479 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
2480 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
2481 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
2482 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
2483
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002484- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00002485
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00002486- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
2487
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00002488- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
2489 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
2490 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
2491 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
2492 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
2493 identical to None.
2494
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00002495- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
2496 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
2497 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
2498 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
2499 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
2500 results now.
2501
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00002502- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
2503 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
2504
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002505- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
2506 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
2507 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
2508 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
2509 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
2510 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
2511 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
2512 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
2513
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00002514- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
2515
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00002516- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
2517 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
2518
2519- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
2520 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
2521 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
2522 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
2523 and other systems.
2524
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002525- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
2526 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
2527 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
2528 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 +00002529 work well with these.
2530
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00002531- compileall now supports quiet operation.
2532
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002533- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00002534 connections.
2535
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00002536- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
2537 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
2538 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
2539
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00002540- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
2541 sets
2542
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00002543- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
2544 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
2545 name.
2546
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00002547- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
2548 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
2549 passed in.
2550
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002551- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00002552 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00002553 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
2554 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00002555
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00002556- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
2557
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00002558- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
2559
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00002560- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
2561 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
2562 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
2563
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002564- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
2565 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
2566 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
2567 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00002568 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002569
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002570- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002571 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002572 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002573
2574- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
2575 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
2576 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
2577
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002578- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00002579 the value of its expression argument.
2580
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002581- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
2582 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
2583 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
2584
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00002585- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
2586 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
2587 skipstone browser was included.
2588
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00002589- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
2590 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
2591
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002592Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002593-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002594
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00002595- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
2596 names in addition to accepting file names.
2597
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00002598- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
2599 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
2600 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
2601 still used and useful.)
2602
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00002603- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
2604 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
2605 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
2606 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00002607
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00002608- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
2609 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
2610 the generated binary.
2611
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002612Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002613-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002614
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00002615- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
2616
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002617- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
2618 except in the hands of experts.
2619
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002620- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002621 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
2622 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
2623 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00002624
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00002625- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
2626 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
2627 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
2628 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
2629 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
2630 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
2631 builds.
2632
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002633- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
2634 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
2635 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
2636 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
2637 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
2638 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
2639 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
2640 new type.
2641
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00002642- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00002643
2644 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
2645 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
2646 positive infinities.
2647
2648 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
2649 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
2650 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
2651 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
2652 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
2653 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
2654 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
2655
2656 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
2657
2658 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
2659
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00002660- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
2661 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
2662 size of the executable.
2663
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002664- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
2665 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
2666 configure script. On other platforms, remove
2667 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00002668
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00002669- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
2670
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00002671- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
2672 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
2673 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00002674
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00002675- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
2676 well as Unix.
2677
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00002678- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
2679 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
2680 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
2681 modules in the README file for details.
2682
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002683C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002684-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002685
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002686- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
2687 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002688 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00002689 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002690 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002691
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002692- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
2693 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
2694 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
2695 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
2696 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
2697 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002698 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002699 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
2700 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
2701 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
2702 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
2703 aligned.)
2704
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00002705- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
2706 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
2707 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
2708
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002709- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
2710 level.
2711
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00002712- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
2713 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
2714 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
2715 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
2716 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
2717
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00002718- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
2719 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
2720 code.
2721
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00002722- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
2723 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
2724 adjusting for negative indices.
2725
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002726- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
2727 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
2728 object.
2729
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00002730- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
2731 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
2732 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
2733
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002734- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
2735 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00002736
2737- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
2738
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00002739- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
2740 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
2741 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
2742 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
2743
2744- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
2745
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00002746- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002747
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002748- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00002749 without going through the buffer API.
2750
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002751- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00002752
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00002753- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
2754 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
2755 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
2756 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
2757
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002758- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
2759 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
2760
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002761- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002762 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
2763
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002764New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002765-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002766
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00002767- OpenVMS is now supported.
2768
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00002769- AtheOS is now supported.
2770
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00002771- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
2772
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00002773- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
2774
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002775Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002776-----
2777
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00002778- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
2779 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
2780 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002781
2782Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002783-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002784
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002785- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
2786 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
2787 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
2788 bugs.
2789 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002790 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00002791 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
2792 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002793 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002794
2795- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00002796 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002797
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00002798- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
2799 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
2800
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002801- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
2802 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002803 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002804 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
2805
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00002806- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
2807 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
2808 use files" uninstall option).
2809
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00002810- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
2811
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002812- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
2813 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
2814
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002815- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
2816 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
2817 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
2818
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002819- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
2820 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
2821 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
2822 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
2823 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002824 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
2825 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
2826 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002827
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002828- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002829 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002830 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
2831 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
2832 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
2833 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
2834 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
2835 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
2836 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
2837 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
2838 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
2839 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
2840 work around.
2841
2842- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
2843 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
2844 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
2845 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
2846 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
2847 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
2848 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
2849 specified with O_CREAT too).
2850
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002851Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002852----
2853
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002854- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002855
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00002856- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
2857 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
2858 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
2859
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002860- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
2861 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
2862 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
2863
2864- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
2865 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
2866 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
2867 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
2868 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
2869 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
2870 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
2871 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002872
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00002873- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
2874 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
2875 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002876
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002877- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
2878 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
2879 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
2880 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
2881 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002882
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002883- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
2884 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
2885 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002886
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002887- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
2888 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002889
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002890- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
2891 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
2892 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
2893 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
2894 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002895
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002896- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
2897 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
2898 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
2899
2900- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
2901 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
2902 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002903
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002904- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
2905 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
2906 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
2907 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002908 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002909
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002910- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
2911 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002912
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002913- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
2914 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002915
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002916- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00002917 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002918 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
2919 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002920
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002921
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002922What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002923===============================
2924
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002925*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
2926
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002927Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002928--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002929
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002930- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
2931 with a custom metaclass.
2932
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002933Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002934-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002935
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002936- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
2937 are proxies.
2938
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002939Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002940-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002941
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002942- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
2943 very short strings.
2944
2945- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
2946 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
2947 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
2948 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
2949 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
2950
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002951Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002952-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002953
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002954- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
2955 close or delete time).
2956
2957- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
2958 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
2959
2960- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
2961
2962- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002963 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002964
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002965Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002966-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002967
2968Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002969-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002970
2971C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002972-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002973
2974New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002975-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002976
2977Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002978-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002979
2980Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002981-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002982
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002983- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
2984
2985- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
2986 instances are deleted at process exit time.
2987
2988- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
2989 deleted at process exit time.
2990
2991- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
2992 in backslash.
2993
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002994Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002995----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002996
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002997- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
2998 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
2999 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3000
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003001
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003002What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003003===========================
3004
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003005*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3006
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003007Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003008--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003009
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003010- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3011 been extensively updated. See
3012
3013 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3014
3015 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3016
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003017- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3018 deleted!
3019
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003020- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3021 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3022 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3023 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3024 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3025
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003026- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3027
3028 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3029 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3030
3031 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3032 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3033 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3034 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3035 supported anyway.
3036
3037 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3038 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3039
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003040- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3041 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3042 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3043 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3044 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003045
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003046- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3047 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3048 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3049
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003050Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003051-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003052
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003053- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3054 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3055 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3056 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3057 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3058 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003059 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3060 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3061 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3062 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003063
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003064- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3065 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3066 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3067
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003068Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003069-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003070
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003071- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3072
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003073Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003074-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003075
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003076- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3077 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3078 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3079 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3080 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3081 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3082
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003083- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3084
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003085- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3086
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003087- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3088
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003089- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3090 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3091 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3092
3093- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3094
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003095Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003096-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003097
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003098- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3099 off a search on Google.
3100
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003101Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003102-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003103
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003104- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3105 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3106 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3107 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3108 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3109 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3110 other platforms should do likewise.
3111
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003112- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3113 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3114 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3115
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003116C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003117-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003118
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003119- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3120 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3121 producing key-value pairs.
3122
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003123- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003124 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003125 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3126 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3127 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3128 previously went unchallenged.
3129
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003130New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003131-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003132
3133Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003134-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003135
3136Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003137-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003138
3139Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003140----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003141
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00003142- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
3143 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003144
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003145- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
3146 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
3147 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
3148 home.
3149
3150
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003151What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003152===========================
3153
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003154*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
3155
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003156Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003157--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003158
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003159- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
3160 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003161
3162 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003163 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003164
3165 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
3166 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003167 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003168 This needs to be documented.
3169
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00003170- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
3171 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
3172
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00003173- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
3174 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
3175 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
3176
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00003177- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
3178 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
3179
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003180- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
3181 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
3182 class forbids it).
3183
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00003184- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
3185 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
3186 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
3187
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003188- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
3189
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003190Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003191-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003192
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003193- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
3194 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003195 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003196
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003197- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
3198 (like 1 + '').
3199
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003200Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003201-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003202
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003203- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
3204 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
3205 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
3206 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003207 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003208 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
3209
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00003210- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
3211 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
3212 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
3213 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
3214
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003215- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
3216 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003217 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
3218 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
3219 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003220
3221- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
3222 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003223
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00003224- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
3225 bytes on its input.
3226
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003227Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003228-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003229
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003230- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00003231 convenience function.
3232
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003233- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
3234 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
3235 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003236 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
3237 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
3238 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
3239 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
3240 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
3241 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003242
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00003243- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
3244 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
3245 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
3246 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
3247
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00003248- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
3249 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
3250 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
3251
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003252- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
3253 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
3254 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
3255 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
3256
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003257- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
3258 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003259 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003260 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
3261 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
3262 new -l and -e options.
3263
3264- statcache is now deprecated.
3265
3266- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
3267 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003268 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003269 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
3270 time properly taken into account.
3271
3272- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
3273 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
3274 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
3275 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
3276
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003277Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003278-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003279
3280Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003281-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003282
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003283- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
3284 is built with libdb3 if available.
3285
3286- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
3287
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003288C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003289-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003290
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00003291- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
3292 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
3293 PySequence_Size().
3294
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003295- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
3296
3297- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
3298 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
3299 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
3300
3301- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
3302 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
3303
3304- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
3305 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
3306
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003307New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003308-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003309
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003310- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
3311 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
3312
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00003313- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
3314 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
3315
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003316- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
3317
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003318Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003319-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003320
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003321- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
3322 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
3323
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003324Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003325-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003326
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003327Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003328----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003329
3330- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
3331 removed completely in the next release.
3332
3333- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
3334 OSX.
3335
3336- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
3337 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
3338
3339- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
3340
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003341
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003342What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003343===========================
3344
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003345*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
3346
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003347Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003348--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003349
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003350- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003351 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003352 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003353 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
3354 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003355 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
3356 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003357 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
3358 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00003359
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00003360- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
3361 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
3362
3363- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
3364 class methods, static methods, and properties.
3365
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003366Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003367-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003368
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00003369- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
3370 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
3371 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
3372 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
3373 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
3374 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
3375 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
3376 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
3377
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003378- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
3379 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
3380 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
3381 example).
3382
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003383- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003384 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003385 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003386 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003387
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003388- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
3389 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
3390 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00003391 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003392
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003393- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
3394 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
3395 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
3396 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
3397 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
3398 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
3399
3400 isinstance(x, (A, B))
3401
3402 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
3403
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003404Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003405-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003406
3407- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
3408
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003409- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
3410
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003411- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
3412 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00003413
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003414- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
3415 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
3416 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
3417 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
3418 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
3419 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00003420 attributes.
3421
3422- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
3423 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
3424 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00003425
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003426- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
3427 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
3428 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003429
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003430- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
3431 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
3432 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003433 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
3434 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
3435
3436- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
3437 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003438
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003439Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003440-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003441
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00003442- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
3443 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
3444
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003445- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
3446 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
3447 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
3448 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
3449
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00003450- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
3451 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
3452 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
3453 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
3454
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00003455 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
3456 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
3457 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
3458 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
3459 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
3460 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
3461 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
3462 without losing information).
3463
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003464- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003465 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
3466 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
3467 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
3468 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
3469 module).
3470
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003471 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003472 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
3473 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
3474 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
3475 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003476
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003477- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00003478 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
3479 encoding.
3480
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00003481- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
3482 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
3483
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003484- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003485 to allow saving the message body to a file.
3486
3487- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
3488 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
3489 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
3490 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
3491
3492- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
3493
3494- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
3495 ON, and OFF.
3496
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003497- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
3498 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
3499
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003500Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003501-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003502
3503- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
3504 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
3505 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003506
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003507- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
3508 been added: -X and -E.
3509
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003510Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003511-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003512
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003513- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
3514 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
3515
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003516C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003517-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003518
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00003519- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
3520 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
3521 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
3522 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
3523 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
3524
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00003525- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
3526 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
3527 as long) arguments.
3528
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003529- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
3530 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
3531 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
3532 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
3533 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
3534 report any bugs or strange behavior).
3535
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003536- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
3537 input.
3538
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003539New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003540-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003541
3542Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003543-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003544
3545Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003546-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003547
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00003548- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
3549 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
3550 is created for .py and .pyw files.
3551
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003552- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
3553 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
3554 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003555 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003556
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003557 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
3558 # (SIGINT) behavior.
3559 import signal
3560 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003561
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003562 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003563 while 1:
3564 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003565 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003566 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
3567 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
3568 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
3569 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003570
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003571
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003572What's New in Python 2.2a4?
3573===========================
3574
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003575*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
3576
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003577Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003578--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003579
3580- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
3581 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
3582 documentation for all operations on list objects.
3583
3584- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
3585 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
3586 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
3587 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
3588 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
3589 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
3590 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003591
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003592- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003593 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003594 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
3595 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
3596 associate a docstring with a property.
3597
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003598- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
3599 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
3600 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
3601 other built-in object types.
3602
3603- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
3604 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
3605 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
3606 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
3607 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
3608
3609- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
3610 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
3611
3612- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
3613 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003614 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003615 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
3616 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
3617 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
3618 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
3619 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
3620
3621- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
3622 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
3623 class.
3624
3625- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
3626 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
3627 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
3628 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
3629
3630- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
3631 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
3632 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
3633 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
3634
3635- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
3636 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
3637
3638- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
3639 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
3640 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
3641 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
3642 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003643 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003644 with the same value as s.
3645
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00003646- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
3647
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003648Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003649----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003650
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00003651- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
3652
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00003653- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
3654 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
3655 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
3656 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
3657 objects.
3658
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003659- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
3660 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00003661 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
3662 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
3663
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003664- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
3665 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
3666 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
3667
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003668Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003669-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003670
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00003671- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3672 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
3673 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
3674 by the instances.
3675
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00003676- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
3677 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
3678 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
3679
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003680- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
3681 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
3682 before the entire comparison is complete.
3683
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00003684- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3685 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
3686 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
3687
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00003688- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
3689 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
3690 getwriter().
3691
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003692- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
3693 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
3694
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00003695- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003696 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
3697 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
3698
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00003699- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
3700 iterable object.
3701
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003702- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
3703 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003704
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003705- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
3706 authentication.
3707
3708- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
3709 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003710
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003711- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00003712 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
3713 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
3714 a sample driver.)
3715
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003716Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003717-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003718
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003719- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
3720 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
3721 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
3722 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
3723 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
3724 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
3725 kernel has large file support.
3726
3727- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
3728 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
3729 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
3730 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
3731 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
3732
3733- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
3734 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
3735 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
3736
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003737C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003738-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003739
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003740- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
3741 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
3742
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003743New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003744-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003745
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003746- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
3747 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
3748
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003749Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003750-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003751
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003752- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
3753 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
3754 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
3755 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
3756 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
3757
3758- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
3759 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
3760 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
3761 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
3762
3763- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
3764 especially in regard to reporting errors.
3765
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003766Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003767-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003768
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003769- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003770 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
3771 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003772
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003773
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003774What's New in Python 2.2a3?
3775===========================
3776
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003777*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
3778
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003779Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003780----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003781
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003782- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
3783 big to represent as a C double.
3784
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00003785- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
3786 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
3787 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
3788 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
3789 restriction).
3790
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00003791- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
3792 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
3793 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
3794 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
3795 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
3796
3797 >>> dir([])
3798 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
3799 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
3800 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
3801 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
3802 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
3803 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
3804 'reverse', 'sort']
3805
3806 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
3807
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003808- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003809 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
3810 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
3811 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
3812 OverflowError exception.
3813
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00003814- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003815 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003816 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
3817 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
3818 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
3819 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
3820 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003821 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003822 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
3823 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
3824
3825 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
3826 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
3827 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
3828 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003829
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003830- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003831 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
3832 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
3833 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
3834 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
3835 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
3836 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
3837 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
3838 once it is created.
3839
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00003840- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
3841 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
3842 (key, value) pairs.
3843
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003844- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003845 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
3846 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
3847
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00003848- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
3849 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
3850 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
3851 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
3852 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003853
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003854- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003855 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
3856 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
3857
3858 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
3859
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003860- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00003861 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
3862
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003863Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003864-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003865
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003866- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00003867 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
3868 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003869
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00003870- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
3871 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
3872 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
3873 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
3874 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
3875 in this area anymore).
3876
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00003877- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
3878 threading.Timer.
3879
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00003880- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
3881 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
3882
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003883- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003884 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
3885
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003886- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00003887 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
3888 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
3889 converted to Python longs.
3890
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003891- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003892 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
3893
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00003894- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
3895 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
3896 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
3897
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003898Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003899-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003900
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003901- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
3902 division operators as per PEP 238.
3903
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003904Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003905-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003906
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003907- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
3908 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
3909 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
3910 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
3911
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003912C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003913-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003914
3915- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003916
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003917- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
3918 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003919 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003920
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003921 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
3922 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003923 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003924 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003925
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003926- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003927 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
3928 module:
3929
3930 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003931
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003932 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
3933 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003934
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003935 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
3936 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003937
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003938 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
3939
3940 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
3941
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003942- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003943 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
3944 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
3945 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003946
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003947New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003948-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003949
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00003950- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
3951 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
3952 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
3953 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
3954 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003955
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003956Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003957-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003958
3959Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003960-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003961
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003962- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
3963 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
3964 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
3965 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00003966 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
3967 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
3968 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
3969 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
3970 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003971
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003972- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00003973 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
3974
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003975
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003976What's New in Python 2.2a2?
3977===========================
3978
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003979*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
3980
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003981Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003982-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003983
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00003984- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
3985 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
3986
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003987- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
3988 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
3989 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003990
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00003991- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
3992 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
3993 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
3994 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003995
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003996- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
3997
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003998- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003999
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004000Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004001-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004002
4003- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004004 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004005 the module docstring for details.
4006
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004007Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004008-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004009
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004010- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004011 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4012 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4013 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004014
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004015- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4016 Nick Mathewson.
4017
4018Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004019----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004020
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004021- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4022 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4023 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4024 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4025 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4026 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4027 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4028 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4029
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004030- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4031 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4032 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4033 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4034
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004035- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4036 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4037 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4038 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4039 come a long way).
4040
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004041- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4042 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4043 write filters for these warnings).
4044
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004045- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4046 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4047 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4048 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4049 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4050
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004051- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4052 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4053 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4054 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4055 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4056 older distribution.
4057
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004058Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004059-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004060
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004061- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4062 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004063 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004064
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004065- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4066 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4067 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4068
4069- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4070
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004071- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4072
4073- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4074
4075- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4076
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004077- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004078
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004079- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4080
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004081New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004082-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004083
4084C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004085-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004086
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004087- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4088 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4089 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4090 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4091 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4092 against buffer overruns.
4093
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004094- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004095 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4096 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004097 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4098 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4099 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4100
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004101- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4102 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4103 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4104 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4105 deprecated.
4106
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004107Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004108-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004109
4110- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4111 relevant is found.
4112
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004113
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004114What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004115===========================
4116
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004117*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4118
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004119Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004120----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004121
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004122- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4123 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4124 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4125 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4126 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4127 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4128 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4129 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004130 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004131 repaired.
4132
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004133- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00004134 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004135 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
4136 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
4137 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
4138 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
4139 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
4140 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
4141 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
4142 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
4143
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00004144- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
4145 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
4146 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
4147 leading BMO character).
4148
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004149- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
4150 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
4151 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
4152
4153 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
4154 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
4155 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004156
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004157 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
4158 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
4159 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
4160 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
4161 for various simple to use conversions.
4162
4163 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
4164 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
4165
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004166 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4167 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
4168 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
4169 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
4170 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4171 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
4172 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4173 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
4174 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4175 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
4176 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4177 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
4178 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4179 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
4180 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004181
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004182- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
4183 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
4184 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004185 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004186 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004187
4188 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004189 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
4190 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
4191 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
4192 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
4193 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004194 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
4195 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004196
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004197 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
4198 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
4199 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004200 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004201
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00004202- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
4203 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
4204 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
4205 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
4206 floating arithmetic,
4207
4208 x = 9007199254740992.0
4209 print long(x)
4210
4211 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
4212 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
4213 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
4214 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
4215 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
4216 functions are of good quality).
4217
4218 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
4219 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
4220 algorithms to break.
4221
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00004222- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
4223 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
4224 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
4225 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
4226 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
4227 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
4228 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
4229 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
4230 order.
4231
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004232- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
4233 operation along the most common code paths.
4234
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004235- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
4236 the same as dict.has_key(x).
4237
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00004238- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
4239 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
4240 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
4241 {}.update(UserDict())
4242
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004243- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
4244 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
4245 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
4246 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
4247 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
4248 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
4249 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
4250 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
4251
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004252- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004253 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004254
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004255 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00004256 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
4257 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00004258 join() method of strings
4259 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004260 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
4261 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004262 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00004263 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004264
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00004265- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
4266 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
4267
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004268- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
4269 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
4270
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00004271- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
4272 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
4273 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
4274 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
4275
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004276- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
4277 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004278 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004279 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
4280 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00004281
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00004282- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
4283
4284
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004285Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004286-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004287
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004288- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004289 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004290 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
4291 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
4292
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00004293- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
4294 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
4295
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00004296- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
4297 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
4298 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
4299 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
4300
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00004301- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
4302 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
4303 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
4304
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00004305- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
4306
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00004307- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
4308
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00004309- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
4310 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
4311 that are still imported into string.py).
4312
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004313- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
4314
4315- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
4316 Now it does.
4317
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004318- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
4319
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004320- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
4321 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
4322 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
4323 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
4324 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004325 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
4326 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004327
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00004328- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
4329 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
4330 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
4331 'help(object)'.
4332
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004333Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004334-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004335
4336- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004337 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004338 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
4339 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
4340
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004341- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004342 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
4343 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004344
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004345C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004346-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004347
4348- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
4349 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004350
4351----
4352
4353**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**