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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000015- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
16present).
17
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000018- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
19 codes.
20
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000021- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
22 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
23 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
24
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000025- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
26 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
27
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000028- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000029 (fixes bug #1119418).
30
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000031- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
32
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000033- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
34 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
35
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000036- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
37 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
38 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
39
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000040- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
41
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000042- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
43 reference counts in some error exit cases.
44
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000045- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
46 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
47 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
48 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
49 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
50 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
51 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
52 realloc.
53
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000054- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
55 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
56
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000057- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
58 like their int counterparts.
59
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000060- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
61 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
62 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
63 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
64 for a longer write-up of the problem).
65
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000066- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
67 serializing floats.
68
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000069- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
70 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
71 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
72
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000073- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
74 278.
75
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000076- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
77 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
78 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
79 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +000080 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000081 PyNumber_*().
82 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
83
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000084- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
85 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
86 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
87 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
88
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000089- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
90 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
91 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
92 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
93 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
94
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000095- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
96 disabled caused a crash.
97
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000098- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
99 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
100
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000101- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000102 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
103
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000104- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
105
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000106- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000107 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
108 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
109 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000110
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000111- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
112
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000113- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
114 returning None.
115
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000116- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000117 ('\') with a specific error message.
118
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000119- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
120
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000121- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
122 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
123
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000124- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000125 an ferror() call.
126
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000127- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
128 list.sort().
129
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000130- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
131 (2+3) --> (5).
132
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000133- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
134
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000135- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
136 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000137
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000138- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
139 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
140 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
141
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000142- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
143 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
144 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
145
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000146Extension Modules
147-----------------
148
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000149- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
150
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000151- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
152
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000153- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
154 the file system encoding.
155
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000156- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
157 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000158
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000159- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
160
161- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000162 line without newlines.
163
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000164- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
165 on Windows.
166
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000167- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
168 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
169
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000170- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
171 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
172 for large or negative values.
173
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000174- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000175 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000176
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000177- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
178
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000179- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
180 if available on the platform.
181
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000182- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
183 available on the platform.
184
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000185- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
186 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
187
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000188- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
189
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000190- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
191 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
192 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
193
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000194- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
195
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000196- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
197 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
198
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000199- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000200 file size.
201
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000202- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
203
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000204- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
205 {remove_history,replace_history}
206
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000207- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
208 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000209
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000210- stat_float_times is now True.
211
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000212- array.array objects are now picklable.
213
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000214- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
215 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
216
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000217- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
218 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
219 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
220
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000221- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
222 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000223
224Library
225-------
226
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000227- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
228 to get the correct encoding.
229
230- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
231 languages.
232
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000233- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
234
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000235- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
236
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000237- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
238
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000239- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
240 functionality.
241
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000242- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
243
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000244- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
245 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
246
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000247- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
248 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
249 match the Content-Length header.
250
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000251- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
252
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000253- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
254 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
255 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
256
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000257- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
258
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000259- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
260
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000261- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
262 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
263
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000264- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
265 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
266 Tkdnd.
267
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000268- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
269 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
270
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000271- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
272 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
273
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000274- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000275 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
276
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000277- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
278 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
279
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000280- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
281 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
282
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000283- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000284 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000285
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000286- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
287
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000288- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
289 error messages.
290
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000291- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
292
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000293- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
294 Bug #1224621.
295
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000296- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
297 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
298 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
299 terminates by raising StopIteration.
300
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000301- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
302
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000303- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
304 component of the path.
305
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000306- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
307 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
308 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
309 class at all.
310
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000311- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
312 files to PyPI.
313
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000314- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
315 them to PyPI.
316
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000317- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
318 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
319 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
320 work as expected.
321
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000322- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
323 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
324
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000325- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000326 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
327
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000328- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
329
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000330- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
331 to build.
332
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000333- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
334 symbolic links on Windows.
335
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000336- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000337 profile.py if available.
338
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000339- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
340
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000341- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
342 in LWPCookieJar.
343
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000344- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
345
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000346- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
347
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000348- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
349
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000350- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
351
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000352- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
353
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000354- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
355
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000356- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
357
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000358- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
359
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000360- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
361 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
362 be exploited in various ways.
363
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000364- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
365
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000366- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
367
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000368- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
369
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000370- Enhancements to the csv module:
371
372 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000373 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000374 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000375 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
376 reporting.
377 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
378 dictates.
379 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000380 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000381 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000382 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
383 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000384 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
385 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000386 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000387 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
388 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
389 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
390 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
391 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
392 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
393 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
394 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
395 without first creating a dialect class.
396 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
397 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
398 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000399 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000400 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
401 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000402 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
403 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
404 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
405 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000406 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
407 This has been fixed.
408
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000409- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
410 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
411 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
412 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
413
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000414- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
415
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000416- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
417 (Bug #951915).
418
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000419- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
420 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
421 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000422 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000423
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000424- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
425
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000426- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
427 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
428
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000429- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
430
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000431- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
432
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000433- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
434
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000435- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
436
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000437- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
438
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000439- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
440 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
441 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
442
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000443- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000444 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000445
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000446- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
447 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
448 tokenizer with very long source lines.
449
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000450- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
451 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
452
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000453- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
454 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000455
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000456- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
457 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
458
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000459- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
460 correctly.
461
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000462- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
463 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
464 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
465 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
466 between two lines.
467
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000468- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
469 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
470 handlers.
471
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000472- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000473 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
474 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000475
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000476- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
477 considering it exactly like a '*'.
478
479
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000480Build
481-----
482
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000483- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
484 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
485
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000486- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
487 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
488
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000489- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
490 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
491 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000492 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000493
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000494- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
495 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
496 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
497
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000498- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
499
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000500- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
501 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
502
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000503- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
504 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
505 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
506 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
507 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
508 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
509 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
510 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
511
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000512- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
513 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
514 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
515 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
516
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000517
518C API
519-----
520
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000521- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
522
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000523- Removed PyRange_New().
524
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000525
526Tests
527-----
528
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000529- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000530
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000531
532Documentation
533-------------
534
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000535- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
536
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000537- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
538
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000539- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
540
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000541- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
542
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000543- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
544
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000545- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
546
547- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
548
549- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
550
551- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
552
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000553- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
554 Closes bug #1166582.
555
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000556- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
557 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
558 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
559
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000560Mac
561---
562
563
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000564New platforms
565-------------
566
567- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
568
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000569
570Tools/Demos
571-----------
572
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000573- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
574 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
575 source files that need an encoding declaration.
576 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
577
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000578- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
579
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000580- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000581
582
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000583What's New in Python 2.4 final?
584===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000585
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000586*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000587
588Core and builtins
589-----------------
590
591- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
592 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
593 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
594
595
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000596What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
597==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000598
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000599*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000600
601Core and builtins
602-----------------
603
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000604- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
605 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
606 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
607
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000608
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000609Library
610-------
611
612- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
613 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
614 raised is re-raised.
615
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000616- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
617 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
618
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000619- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
620 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
621 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
622 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
623 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
624 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
625 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
626 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
627 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
628 by the slice are recomputed now.
629
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000630- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000631
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000632Build
633-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000634
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000635- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
636 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
637 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000638
639C API
640-----
641
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000642- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
643
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000644
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000645What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
646================================
647
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000648*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000649
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000650License
651-------
652
653The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
654is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
655changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
656Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
657intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
658durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
659the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
660License::
661
662 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
663
664says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
665to Python 2.1.1.
666
667The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
668License Version 2.
669
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000670Core and builtins
671-----------------
672
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000673- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
674 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
675 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
676 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
677 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
678 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
679 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
680 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
681 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
682 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
683
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000684- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000685
686Extension Modules
687-----------------
688
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000689- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
690 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
691 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
692 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000693
694Library
695-------
696
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000697- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
698 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
699 returned.
700
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000701- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
702
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000703- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
704 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
705
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000706- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
707
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000708- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
709 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000710
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000711- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
712
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000713- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
714
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000715- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000716 the source code is updated and reloaded.
717
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000718Build
719-----
720
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000721- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000722
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000723What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
724================================
725
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000726*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000727
728Core and builtins
729-----------------
730
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000731- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000732 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
733
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000734- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
735 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
736 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
737 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
738
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000739- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
740 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
741
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000742- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
743 constant.
744
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000745- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
746 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
747 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
748 large), and to anomalies such as
749 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
750 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
751 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
752 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000753
754Extension modules
755-----------------
756
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000757- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
758 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000759 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
760 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
761 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000762
763Library
764-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000765
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000766- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000767 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000768 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
769 --swig-cpp.
770
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000771- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
772 it is set.
773
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000774- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000775
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000776- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
777 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
778 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
779 Closes bug #1039270.
780
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000781- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000782
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000783 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000784 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
785 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
786 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
787 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
788 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
789 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
790 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
791 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
792 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
793 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
794 + Updates to documentation.
795
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000796- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
797 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
798 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
799 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
800
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000801- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000802
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000803- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
804 applications should use the getmember function.
805
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000806- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
807
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000808- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
809 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
810 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
811 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
812 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
813 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
814 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
815 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
816 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
817
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000818- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
819 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000820 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000821
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000822- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
823 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
824 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
825 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
826 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
827 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
828 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
829 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000830
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000831- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
832 the new public features (of which there are many).
833
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000834- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000835 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
836 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
837 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
838 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000839 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000840
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000841- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
842
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000843- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
844 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
845 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
846 options.
847
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000848- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
849 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
850 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
851 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
852 conditions under which non-string values work.
853
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000854Build
855-----
856
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000857- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
858 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
859 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
860
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000861- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
862 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
863 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
864 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
865 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000866
867C API
868-----
869
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000870- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
871 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
872
873- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
874
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000875- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
876 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
877 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
878 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
879 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
880 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
881 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
882 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
883 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
884
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000885- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
886
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000887- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
888 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
889 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000890
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000891Tests
892-----
893
894- test__locale ported to unittest
895
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000896Mac
897---
898
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000899- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
900 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
901 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000902
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000903Tools/Demos
904-----------
905
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000906- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
907 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
908 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
909 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
910 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000911
912
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000913What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
914=================================
915
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000916*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000917
918Core and builtins
919-----------------
920
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000921- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000922 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
923
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000924- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
925 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
926 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
927 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
928 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
929 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
930 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
931 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000932 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
933 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
934 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
935 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
936 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000937
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000938- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
939 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
940 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
941 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
942 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
943
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000944- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
945
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000946- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
947 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
948
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000949- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
950 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
951 modified the list.
952
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000953- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
954 functions is now writable.
955
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000956- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
957 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
958 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
959 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
960
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000961- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
962 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
963 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
964 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
965 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000966
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000967- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
968 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
969
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000970Extension modules
971-----------------
972
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000973- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
974
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000975- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
976 data.
977
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000978- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
979 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
980 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
981 supposed to have been truncated away.
982
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000983- Added socket.socketpair().
984
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000985- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
986 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
987
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000988- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000989 versions of Python, have now been removed.
990
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000991Library
992-------
993
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000994- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000995 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000996
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000997- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
998 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
999
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001000- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1001 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1002
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001003- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1004
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001005- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1006 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001007
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001008- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1009 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1010
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001011- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1012
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001013- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1014
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001015- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1016
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001017- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1018 Percivall.
1019
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001020- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1021 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1022
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001023- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1024 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1025 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001026 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001027
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001028- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1029 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1030 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1031 and exponent.
1032
1033- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1034
1035- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001036 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001037 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1038
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001039- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1040 to the readline module.
1041
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001042- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001043 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1044 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001045
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001046- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1047 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1048 contains symlinks.
1049
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001050- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1051 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1052
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001053- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1054 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1055 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1056
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001057- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1058 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1059 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1060 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1061 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1062 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1063 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1064 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1065 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1066 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1067 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1068 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1069 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1070
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001071- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1072
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001073Tools/Demos
1074-----------
1075
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001076- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1077 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1078
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001079- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1080
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001081Build
1082-----
1083
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001084- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1085 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1086 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1087 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1088 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1089 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1090 plans to do so.
1091
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001092- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1093 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1094
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001095- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1096 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1097
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001098- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1099 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1100
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001101- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1102 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1103
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001104- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1105 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1106
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001107C API
1108-----
1109
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001110..
1111
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001112Documentation
1113-------------
1114
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001115- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1116 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1117
1118- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1119 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1120 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001121
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001122New platforms
1123-------------
1124
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001125- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1126
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001127Tests
1128-----
1129
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001130..
1131
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001132Windows
1133-------
1134
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001135- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1136 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1137 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1138 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1139 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1140 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1141 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1142 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1143 the problem.
1144
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001145Mac
1146---
1147
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001148..
1149
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001150
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001151What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1152=================================
1153
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001154*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001155
1156Core and builtins
1157-----------------
1158
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001159- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1160 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1161 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1162 sensitive code.
1163
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001164- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001165 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001166
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001167 @staticmethod
1168 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001169
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001170 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001171
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001172- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1173 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1174 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1175 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1176 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1177 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1178 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1179 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1180 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1181 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1182 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1183
1184 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1185 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1186 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1187 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1188 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1189 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1190 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1191
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001192- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1193 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1194
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001195- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001196 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001197
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001198- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001199 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001200 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1201
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001202- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001203 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1204 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1205
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001206- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1207 types that support garbage collection.
1208
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001209- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1210
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001211- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1212 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1213 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1214 Jython.
1215
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001216- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1217
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001218- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1219 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1220
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001221- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1222 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1223 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001224
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001225- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1226 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1227 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1228
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001229Extension modules
1230-----------------
1231
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001232- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1233
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001234Library
1235-------
1236
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001237- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1238 TIS-620
1239
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001240- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1241 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1242 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1243 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1244 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1245 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1246 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1247 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1248 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1249 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1250
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001251- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1252
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001253- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1254 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1255 same as when the argument is omitted).
1256 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1257
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001258- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1259
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001260- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1261 schemes are offered.
1262
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001263- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1264
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001265- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1266 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1267 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1268
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001269- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1270
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001271- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1272 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1273
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001274- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1275 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1276 when dummy_threading is being used.
1277
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001278- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1279 from a tarfile.
1280
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001281- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001282 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001283
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001284- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1285 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1286 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1287 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1288
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001289- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1290 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1291
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001292- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1293 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1294 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1295 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1296 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1297 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1298 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1299 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1300 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1301 by some other method in progress).
1302
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001303- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1304 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1305 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001306
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001307- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1308
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001309- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1310 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1311 AM Kuchling.
1312
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001313- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1314 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1315 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1316
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001317- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1318 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1319 instead of unsigned.
1320
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001321- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001322 no longer part of the public API.
1323
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001324- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1325 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1326 string methods of the same name).
1327
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001328- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001329 SF patch 945642.
1330
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001331- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1332
1333 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1334
1335 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1336 DocTestSuites.
1337
1338- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1339 that provide thread-local data.
1340
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001341- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1342 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1343
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001344- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1345
1346- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1347 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1348 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1349
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001350- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1351
1352 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1353 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1354 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001355
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001356 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1357 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1358 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1359 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1360
1361 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1362 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1363
1364 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1365 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1366 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1367 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1368
1369 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1370 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1371 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1372 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1373 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1374
1375 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1376 wrapping help output.
1377
1378 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1379 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1380 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001381
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001382C API
1383-----
1384
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001385- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1386 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1387 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1388 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1389 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1390 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1391 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1392 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1393 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1394 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1395 its visible semantics have not changed.
1396
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001397- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1398 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1399
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001400Documentation
1401-------------
1402
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001403- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001404
1405 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001406 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001407
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001408 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001409
1410 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1411
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001412- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001413
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001414Tests
1415-----
1416
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001417- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001418 platforms that use the Makefile.
1419
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001420- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1421 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1422 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1423
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001424
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001425What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1426=================================
1427
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001428*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001429
1430Core and builtins
1431-----------------
1432
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001433- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1434 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1435 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1436 objects now (one object instead of three).
1437
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001438- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1439 Windows DLLs.
1440
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001441- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1442 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001443
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001444- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1445 a new .pyc magic.
1446
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001447- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1448 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1449 be there.
1450
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001451- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1452 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1453 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1454
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001455- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1456 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1457 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1458
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001459- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1460
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001461- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1462 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1463 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001464
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001465- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1466 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1467
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001468- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1469
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001470- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001471 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001472
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001473- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1474
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001475- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1476
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001477- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1478 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1479
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001480- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1481 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1482 Fixes bug #858016 .
1483
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001484- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1485 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1486 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1487
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001488- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1489 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1490 improves their performance (about 35%).
1491
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001492- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1493 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1494 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1495
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001496- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1497 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1498 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1499 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1500
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001501- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1502 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001503 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001504 length is not known).
1505
1506- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1507 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001508 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1509 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001510 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1511
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001512- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1513 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1514
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001515- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1516 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1517 keyword arguments.
1518
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001519- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1520 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1521 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1522
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001523- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1524 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1525 cases.
1526
1527- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1528 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1529 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1530 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1531 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1532 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1533 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1534 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1535 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1536 a release build.
1537
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001538- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1539 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1540
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001541- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001542 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001543
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001544- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1545 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1546 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1547 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1548 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1549 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1550 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1551 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1552 destroyed.
1553
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001554- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1555 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1556 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1557 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1558 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1559 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1560 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1561 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1562
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001563- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1564 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1565 character other than a space.
1566
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001567- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1568 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1569 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1570 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1571 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1572 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1573 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1574 attributes with the same name.
1575
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001576- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1577 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1578 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1579 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1580 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1581 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1582 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1583 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1584 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1585 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1586 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1587 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1588 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1589 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001590
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001591- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1592 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1593 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1594 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1595 This has been repaired.
1596
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001597- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1598
1599- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1600
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001601- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1602 over a sequence.
1603
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001604- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001605 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001606
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001607- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1608
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001609- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1610 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1611 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1612 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1613 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1614 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1615 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1616 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1617
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001618- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1619 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1620 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1621
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001622- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1623 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1624 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1625 freelist.
1626
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001627- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1628 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1629
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001630- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1631 number.
1632
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001633- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1634 a TypeError exception.
1635
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001636- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1637 820195.
1638
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001639- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1640 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1641 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1642
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001643- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001644 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1645 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001646
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001647- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1648 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1649 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1650
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001651- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1652 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001653 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001654
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001655- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001656 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1657 the first call.
1658
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001659
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001660Extension modules
1661-----------------
1662
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001663- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1664 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1665
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001666- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1667 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1668 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1669 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1670 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1671 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1672 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001673
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001674- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1675
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001676- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1677
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001678- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1679 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1680
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001681- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1682 fewer false positives.
1683
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001684- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1685 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1686
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001687- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001688 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1689
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001690- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001691 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001692 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001693 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1694 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001695
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001696- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1697 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1698 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1699 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1700
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001701- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1702 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1703 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1704 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1705 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1706 #897625.
1707
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001708- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1709 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1710
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001711- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1712 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1713 and pops on either side of the deque.
1714
1715- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1716 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1717
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001718- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1719 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1720 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1721 other functions that expect a function argument.
1722
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001723- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1724
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001725- os.getsid was added.
1726
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001727- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1728 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1729 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1730
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001731- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1732
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001733- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1734
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001735- readline.clear_history was added.
1736
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001737- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1738
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001739- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1740
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001741- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1742
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001743- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1744
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001745- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1746
1747- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1748
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001749- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1750
1751- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1752
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001753- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1754 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1755 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1756
1757- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1758 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1759 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1760 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1761 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1762 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1763 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1764
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001765- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1766 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1767 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1768 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001769
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001770- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001771 iterators from a single iterable.
1772
1773- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1774 of raising a TypeError exception.
1775
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001776- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1777 as parameter.
1778
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001779Library
1780-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001781
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001782- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1783
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001784- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1785 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1786 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001787
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001788- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1789 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1790 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001791
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001792- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001793
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001794- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1795 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001796
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001797- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1798 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1799
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001800- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1801
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001802- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001803 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001804
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001805- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001806 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001807
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001808- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1809
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001810- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1811 on cygwin and mingw32.
1812
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001813- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1814
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001815- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1816 module.
1817
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001818- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1819 installation scheme for all platforms.
1820
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001821- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001822 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001823
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001824- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1825 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1826 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1827
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001828- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1829 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1830 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1831
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001832- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1833
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001834- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1835
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001836- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1837 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1838
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001839- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1840 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1841 type pattern with the same value exists.
1842
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001843- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1844 when run from the command prompt).
1845
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001846- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1847 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1848
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001849- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1850 default sort).
1851
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001852- Added global runctx function to profile module
1853
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001854- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1855
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001856- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1857
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001858- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1859
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001860- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001861 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1862 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1863 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1864 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1865 accordingly.
1866
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001867- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1868 decoding standards.
1869
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001870- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1871 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1872 called for all requests.
1873
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001874- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1875 they are passed to the compiler.
1876
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001877- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1878 indent, width and depth.
1879
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001880- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1881 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1882
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001883- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1884 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1885
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001886- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1887
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001888- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1889
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001890- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1891
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001892- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1893 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1894
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001895- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001896 for better performance.
1897
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001898- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001899
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001900- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1901 a string).
1902
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001903- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1904
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001905- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1906
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001907- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1908
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001909- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1910
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001911- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1912 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1913 list of fieldnames.
1914
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001915- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1916 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1917
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001918- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1919
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001920- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1921 empty lists.
1922
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001923- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1924 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1925 and shelves.
1926
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001927- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1928 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1929
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001930- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001931 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1932 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001933
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001934- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1935 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001936 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001937
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001938- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001939 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1940 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1941
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001942- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1943 and removed in Py2.4.
1944
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001945- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1946
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001947- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1948
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001949Tools/Demos
1950-----------
1951
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001952- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1953 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1954
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001955- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1956
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001957- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1958 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1959 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1960 destination in situations where both files are given.
1961
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001962- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1963 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1964 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1965 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1966
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001967- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1968
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001969- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1970 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1971 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1972 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1973 now.
1974
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001975- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1976 in effect
1977
1978- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1979 C-c C-h
1980
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001981- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1982 -d option was given.
1983
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001984Build
1985-----
1986
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001987- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1988 build under OS X.
1989
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001990- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1991 --enable-profiling.
1992
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001993- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1994 is configured --with-tsc.
1995
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001996- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1997 on AMD64.
1998
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001999- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2000 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2001
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002002- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2003 removed.
2004
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002005- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2006 supported (see PEP 11).
2007
2008- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2009
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002010- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2011
2012- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2013 (see PEP 11).
2014
2015- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2016 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2017
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002018C API
2019-----
2020
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002021- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2022 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2023 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2024
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002025- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2026 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2027 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2028 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2029
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002030- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2031 generator objects.
2032
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002033- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2034 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002035 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2036 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002037
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002038- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2039 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2040
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002041- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2042 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2043 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2044 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2045 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2046
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002047- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2048 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2049 about 10% faster.
2050
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002051- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2052 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2053
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002054- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2055 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2056 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2057 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2058
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002059Windows
2060-------
2061
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002062- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2063 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2064 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2065 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2066
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002067- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2068 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2069 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2070
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002071
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002072What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2073===============================
2074
2075*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2076
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002077IDLE
2078----
2079
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002080- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2081 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2082 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2083 context-menu actions.
2084
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002085- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2086 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2087 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2088 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2089 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2090 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2091 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2092 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2093 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2094
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002095
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002096What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2097=============================================
2098
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002099*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002100
2101Core and builtins
2102-----------------
2103
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002104- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002105 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002106 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2107
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002108Extension modules
2109-----------------
2110
2111- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2112 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2113 than once. This has been fixed.
2114
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002115- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2116 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2117 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2118 call.
2119
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002120- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2121
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002122Library
2123-------
2124
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002125- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2126 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2127
2128- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2129 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2130 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2131 restored.
2132
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002133IDLE
2134----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002135
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002136- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002137
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002138Build
2139-----
2140
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002141- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2142 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2143
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002144C API
2145-----
2146
2147Windows
2148-------
2149
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002150- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2151 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2152
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002153- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2154
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002155Mac
2156---
2157
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002158- Various fixes to pimp.
2159
2160- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2161
2162- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2163 more problems than it solves.
2164
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002165
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002166What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2167=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002168
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002169*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2170
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002171Core and builtins
2172-----------------
2173
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002174- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2175 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2176
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002177- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2178 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002179 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002180
2181- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2182 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2183 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002184 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002185
2186- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2187 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002188
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002189- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2190 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2191 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2192
2193- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002194 770247.
2195
2196- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002197
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002198Extension modules
2199-----------------
2200
2201- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2202 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2203
2204- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2205
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002206- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2207
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002208- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2209 contained within the _strptime module.
2210
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002211- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2212 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2213
2214- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002215 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2216
2217- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2218 the find_class attribute, if present.
2219
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002220- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002221
2222 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2223 (SF bug 763298).
2224
2225 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002226 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2227 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2228 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002229
2230 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2231
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002232Library
2233-------
2234
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002235- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2236
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002237- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2238 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2239 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2240 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2241 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2242 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2243 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2244 or Tester().
2245
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002246- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2247 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2248 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2249 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2250 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2251 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2252 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2253 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2254 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002255
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002256 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002257
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002258- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2259 weren't before was an oversight.
2260
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002261- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2262 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2263
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002264- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2265 when there are no lines.
2266
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002267- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2268 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2269
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002270- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2271 to child processes.
2272
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002273- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2274
2275- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2276
2277- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2278 xmlrpclib.
2279
2280- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2281 responses.
2282
2283- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2284 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2285
2286- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2287 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2288 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2289
2290- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2291 used as patterns.
2292
2293- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2294 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2295 than Tk 8.3.
2296
2297- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2298
2299- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002300
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002301Tools/Demos
2302-----------
2303
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002304- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2305
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002306- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2307
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002308- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002309
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002310Build
2311-----
2312
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002313- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2314
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002315- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2316
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002317- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2318 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002319
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002320- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2321 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2322 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002323
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002324C API
2325-----
2326
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002327- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2328 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2329
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002330Windows
2331-------
2332
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002333- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2334 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2335 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2336 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2337 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2338 Python exception ::
2339
2340 thread.error: can't start new thread
2341
2342 is raised now.
2343
2344- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2345 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2346 instead of from DLL teardown.
2347
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002348Mac
2349---
2350
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002351- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002352 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002353 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2354 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2355 the executable in the bundle.
2356
2357- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002358
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002359- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2360
2361- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2362 on Panther.
2363
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002364What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2365================================
2366
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002367*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002368
2369Core and builtins
2370-----------------
2371
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002372- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2373 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2374 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2375 with the -i option.
2376
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002377- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2378 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2379
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002380- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2381 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2382
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002383- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2384 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2385 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2386 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2387 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2388 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2389 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2390 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2391 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2392 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2393 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2394 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2395 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002396
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002397- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2398 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2399 embedded in a lambda expression.
2400
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002401- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2402 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2403 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2404 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2405 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2406
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002407- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2408 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2409 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2410
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002411- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2412 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2413
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002414- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2415 It's writable again.
2416
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002417- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2418 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2419 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002420 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002421
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002422- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2423 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2424 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2425
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002426Extension modules
2427-----------------
2428
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002429- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2430 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2431
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002432- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2433 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2434 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2435 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2436
2437- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2438 collection.
2439
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002440- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2441 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2442 unique within a single program run.
2443
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002444- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2445 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2446
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002447- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2448 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2449
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002450- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2451 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002452
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002453- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2454
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002455- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2456 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2457
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002458- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2459 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2460 for many BSD-derived systems.
2461
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002462
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002463Library
2464-------
2465
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002466- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2467 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2468 primary ones:
2469
2470 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2471 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2472 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2473
2474 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2475 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2476 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2477 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2478 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2479 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2480
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002481- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2482 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2483 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2484 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2485 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2486 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2487 argument.
2488
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002489- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2490 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2491 in the archive.
2492
2493- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2494 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2495
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002496- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2497 569574).
2498
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002499- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2500 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2501 no more.
2502
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002503- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2504 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2505 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2506 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2507 code coverage.
2508
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002509- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2510 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2511 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002512 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2513 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002514
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002515- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2516 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2517 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002518 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002519
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002520- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2521
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002522- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2523 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2524 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2525 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2526
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002527- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2528 handling.
2529
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002530- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2531 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2532
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002533- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2534 in socket.py.
2535
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002536- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2537
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002538- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2539 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2540 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2541 opener with proxy support.
2542
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002543- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2544
2545- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2546
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002547Tools/Demos
2548-----------
2549
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002550- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2551
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002552- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2553
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002554- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2555 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002556
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002557- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2558 files.
2559
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002560Build
2561-----
2562
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002563- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002564 different root directory.
2565
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002566C API
2567-----
2568
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002569- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2570 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2571 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2572 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2573 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2574 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2575 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2576 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2577 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2578 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2579
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002580- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2581 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2582 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2583 from Python.
2584
2585
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002586New platforms
2587-------------
2588
2589None this time.
2590
2591Tests
2592-----
2593
2594- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2595 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2596
2597Windows
2598-------
2599
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002600- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2601
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002602- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2603 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2604 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2605 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2606 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2607 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2608 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2609 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2610 that's what it's for.
2611
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002612Mac
2613---
2614
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002615- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2616 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2617 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2618 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002619- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2620 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2621- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002622
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002623SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2624------------------------------------
2625
2626430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2627598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2628622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2629661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2630683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2631697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2632713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2633724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2634727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2635729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2636730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2637731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2638732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2639733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2640735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2641740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2642744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2643745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2644747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2645749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2646751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2647753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2648755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2649757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2650760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2651
2652
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002653What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2654================================
2655
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002656*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002657
2658Core and builtins
2659-----------------
2660
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002661- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2662 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2663
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002664- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2665 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2666 and cannot be strings).
2667
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002668- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2669 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2670 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2671 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2672
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002673- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2674 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2675 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2676 Python itself.
2677
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002678- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2679 the referenced object, if it has one.
2680
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002681- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2682 the thread started at
2683 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2684
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002685- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2686 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2687 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2688 placed on a list index.
2689
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002690- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2691 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2692 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2693 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2694
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002695- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2696 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2697 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2698 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2699 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2700 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2701 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2702
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002703- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2704 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2705 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2706 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2707 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2708
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002709- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2710 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002711
2712- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2713 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2714 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2715 #693195.)
2716
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002717- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2718 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002719
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002720- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002721 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002722 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2723 interpreter executions, would fail.
2724
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002725- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002726 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002727 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002728
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002729Extension modules
2730-----------------
2731
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002732- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2733 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2734 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2735 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2736
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002737- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2738 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2739
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002740- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2741 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2742 and Greg Chapman.)
2743
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002744- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2745 recursively.
2746
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002747- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002748 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2749 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2750 leaks.
2751
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002752- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2753
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002754- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2755 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2756 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2757 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2758 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2759 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2760 #705836.
2761
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002762- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002763 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2764
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002765- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2766 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2767 See SF bug #692416.
2768
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002769- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2770 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2771
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002772- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2773 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2774 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002775
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002776- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002777 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2778 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2779
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002780- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2781 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2782 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2783 timeouts to work properly.
2784
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002785Library
2786-------
2787
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002788- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2789 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2790 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2791 future release.
2792
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002793- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2794 for querying platform dependent features.
2795
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002796- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002797
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002798- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2799 pickle protocol versions.
2800
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002801- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2802 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2803 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2804
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002805- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2806
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002807- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2808 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2809 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2810 modules.
2811
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002812- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2813 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2814 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2815
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002816- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2817 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2818
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002819- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2820 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2821 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2822
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002823- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002824 MS Office extensions.
2825
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002826- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2827 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2828
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002829- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2830 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2831
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002832- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2833 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2834 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2835 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2836 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2837 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2838
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002839- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2840 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2841 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002842
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002843- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2844 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2845 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2846
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002847- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2848
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002849- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2850 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2851 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2852
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002853Tools/Demos
2854-----------
2855
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002856- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2857 See the module docstring for details.
2858
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002859Build
2860-----
2861
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002862- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2863 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002864
2865C API
2866-----
2867
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002868- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2869
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002870- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2871 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2872 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2873
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002874- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2875 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002876
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002877 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2878 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2879 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002880
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002881- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002882 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2883
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002884- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2885 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2886 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002887
2888New platforms
2889-------------
2890
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002891None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002892
2893Tests
2894-----
2895
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002896- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2897 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002898
2899Windows
2900-------
2901
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002902- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2903 function.
2904
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002905- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2906 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002907
2908Mac
2909---
2910
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002911- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2912 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002913
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002914- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2915 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002916
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002917- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2918 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2919 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002920
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002921- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002922 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2923 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002924
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002925- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2926 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002927
2928
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002929What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2930=================================
2931
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002932*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002933
2934Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002935-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002936
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002937- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2938 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2939 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2940
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002941- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2942 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2943 (SF patch #664376.)
2944
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002945- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2946 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2947 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2948 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2949 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2950 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002951 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002952
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002953- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2954 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2955 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2956 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002957 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002958
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002959- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2960 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2961 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2962 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2963 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2964 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2965 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2966 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2967 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2968 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2969 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2970
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002971- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2972 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2973 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2974 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2975 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2976 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2977
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002978- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2979 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2980
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002981- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2982 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2983 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2984 case.)
2985
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002986- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2987 passed as unicode strings.
2988
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002989- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2990 See SF bug #683467.
2991
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002992- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2993 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2994
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002995- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2996
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002997- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2998
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002999- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3000 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3001 arguments.
3002
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003003- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3004 See SF bug #667147.
3005
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003006- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003007 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003008 See SF bug #676155.
3009
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003010- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003011 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003012 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3013 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3014 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3015 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3016 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3017 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003018
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003019Extension modules
3020-----------------
3021
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003022- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3023 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3024 tp_as_number pointer.
3025
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003026- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3027 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3028 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3029 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3030 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3031
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003032- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3033
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003034- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3035
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003036- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003037 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003038 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3039 patch #678531.)
3040
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003041- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3042 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3043
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003044- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3045 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3046
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003047- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3048
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003049- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3050 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3051 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3052
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003053- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3054
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003055- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3056 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3057
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003058- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003059
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003060- datetime changes:
3061
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003062 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3063
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003064 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3065 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3066 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3067 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3068 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3069 now.
3070
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003071 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003072 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3073 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003074
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003075 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003076 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003077 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3078 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3079 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3080 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003081
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003082 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3083 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3084 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003085 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3086
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003087 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3088 by a later example coded by Guido.
3089
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003090 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003091 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3092 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3093 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003094 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3095 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3096
3097 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3098 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3099 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3100 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3101 tzinfo subclass instance.
3102
3103 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3104 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3105 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3106 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3107 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3108 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3109 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3110 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003111
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003112 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3113 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3114 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3115 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3116 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003117 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3118
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003119 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003120
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003121 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3122 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3123 as a naive datetime object.
3124
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003125 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3126 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3127 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3128
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003129 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3130 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3131 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3132 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3133 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3134 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3135 comparison.
3136
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003137 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3138 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3139 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3140 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003141 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003142
3143 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003144
3145 and ::
3146
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003147 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3148
3149 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3150 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3151 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3152 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3153
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003154 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3155 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3156 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3157 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3158 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3159
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003160 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3161 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003162 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3163 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003164
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003165Library
3166-------
3167
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003168- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3169 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3170
3171- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3172 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3173 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3174 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3175 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3176 See PEP 307 for details.
3177
3178- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3179 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3180
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003181- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3182 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003183 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003184 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3185 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003186 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003187
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003188- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3189 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3190
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003191- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3192 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3193 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3194
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003195- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3196
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003197- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3198 exception.
3199
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003200- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3201 class.
3202
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003203- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3204 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3205 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3206
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003207- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3208 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3209
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003210- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003211 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3212 See SF bug #659228.
3213
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003214- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3215 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3216 See SF patch #651082.
3217
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003218- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003219
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003220- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3221 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3222
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003223- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003224 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003225
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003226- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3227 DOS paths from other platforms.
3228
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003229Tools/Demos
3230-----------
3231
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003232- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3233 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3234 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3235 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3236 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3237 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3238 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3239 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3240 example:
3241
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003242 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3243 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003244
3245 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3246
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003247
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003248Build
3249-----
3250
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003251- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3252 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3253 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003254 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3255
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003256 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3257
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003258- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3259 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3260 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3261 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3262 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3263 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3264 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3265 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3266 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3267
3268- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3269 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3270 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3271 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3272
3273- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3274 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3275
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003276C API
3277-----
3278
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003279- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3280 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003281
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003282- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3283 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3284 tp_as_number pointer.
3285
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003286- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3287 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3288 (SF #681367)
3289
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003290- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3291 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3292 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3293 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003294
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003295Tests
3296-----
3297
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003298- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003299 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3300 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3301 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3302 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3303 pydoc.)
3304
3305- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3306
3307- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003308
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003309Windows
3310-------
3311
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003312- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3313 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3314 time).
3315
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003316- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3317 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3318
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003319- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3320 release without strong cryptography.
3321
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003322- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003323 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003324
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003325- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3326 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3327
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003328Mac
3329---
3330
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003331- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3332 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003333
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003334- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3335 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3336 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003337
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003338- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3339 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003340
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003341- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3342 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3343 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3344 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003345
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003346- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003347 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3348 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3349 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003350
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003351
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003352What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003353=================================
3354
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003355*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003356
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003357Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003358--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003359
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003360- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3361
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003362- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3363 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003364 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003365 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003366 a different meaning than before.
3367
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003368- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003369 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003370 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003371
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003372- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003373 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003374 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003375
3376- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3377 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3378 and deallocation.
3379
3380- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3381 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3382
3383- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3384 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3385 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3386 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3387 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3388
3389- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3390 now detected by the garbage collector.
3391
3392- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3393 [SF bug 519621]
3394
3395- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3396 identifier.
3397
3398- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3399 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3400 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3401 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3402 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3403 [SF bug 563060]
3404
3405- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3406 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3407 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3408 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3409 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3410
3411- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3412 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3413 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3414
3415- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3416
3417- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3418 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3419 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3420 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3421 state of the slots would be lost.)
3422
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003423Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003424-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003425
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003426- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003427 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3428 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3429 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3430 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003431 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3432 Jython 2.1.
3433
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003434- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003435 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003436 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3437 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3438 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3439 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3440 these, see PEP 302.
3441
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003442- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3443 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3444 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3445
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003446- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3447 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3448 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3449
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003450- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3451 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3452 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3453
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003454- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3455 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3456 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3457 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3458 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3459 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3460 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3461 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3462 releases or implementations.
3463
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003464- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003465 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3466 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003467
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003468- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3469 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3470
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003471- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3472 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3473 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3474
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003475- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3476 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3477
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003478- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3479 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003480 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3481 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003482
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003483- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3484 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3485 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3486 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3487 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3488
3489 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3490 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3491 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3492 pattern.
3493
3494 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3495 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3496 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3497 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3498
3499 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3500 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3501 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3502 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3503 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3504 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3505
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003506- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3507 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3508 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3509 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3510 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3511 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3512 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3513 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003514
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003515- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3516 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3517 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3518 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3519 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003520 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3521 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3522 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3523 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3524 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3525 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3526 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003527
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003528- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3529 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3530
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003531- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3532 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3533 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3534 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3535 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3536 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3537 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3538 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3539 to Zack Weinberg!
3540
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003541- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3542 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3543 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3544 type. This has been fixed now.
3545
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003546- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3547 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3548 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3549
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003550- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3551 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3552 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3553 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3554 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3555 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3556 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3557 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003558 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003559
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003560- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3561 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3562 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003563
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003564- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3565 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3566 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3567 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3568 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3569 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3570 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3571 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003572 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003573 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3574 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3575
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003576- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3577 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3578 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3579 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3580 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3581 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3582 this.)
3583
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003584- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3585 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003586 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003587 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003588 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3589 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003590 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3591 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003592
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003593- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3594 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3595 currently running.
3596
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003597- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3598 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3599 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3600 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3601
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003602- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3603 as directory names.
3604
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003605- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3606 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3607
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003608- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3609 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3610
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003611- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003612 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3613 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003614
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003615- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3616 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3617 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3618 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3619 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3620
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003621- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3622 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3623 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3624 removed.
3625
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003626- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3627 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3628 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3629
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003630- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3631 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3632 to __debug__.
3633
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003634- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3635 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3636 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3637
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003638- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3639 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3640 deprecated now.
3641
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003642- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3643 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3644 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003645
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003646- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3647 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3648 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3649 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3650 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003651
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003652- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3653 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3654
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003655- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3656 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3657 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003658 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003659 is backward compatible.
3660
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003661- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3662 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3663 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3664 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3665 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3666
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003667- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3668 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3669 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3670 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3671 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3672 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003673
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003674- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3675 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3676
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003677- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3678 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3679
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003680- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3681 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3682 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3683 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3684 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3685
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003686- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3687 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3688 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3689
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003690- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003691 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3692
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003693- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3694 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3695 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003696
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003697- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3698 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3699
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003700- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3701 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3702 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3703
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003704- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3705
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003706Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003707-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003708
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003709- Added three operators to the operator module:
3710 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3711 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3712 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3713
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003714- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3715
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003716- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3717 archives.
3718
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003719- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3720 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3721 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3722
3723 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3724
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003725- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3726 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3727 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003728 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003729
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003730- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3731 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3732 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3733 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003734 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3735 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3736 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3737 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003738
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003739- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3740 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003741
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003742- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3743
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003744- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3745 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3746
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003747- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3748 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3749 supported.
3750
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003751- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3752
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003753- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3754 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003755
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003756- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3757 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3758
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003759- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3760
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003761- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3762 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3763
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003764- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3765 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3766 functions but callable type objects.
3767
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003768- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003769 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003770 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003771
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003772- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3773 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003774
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003775- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3776 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003777
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003778- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3779 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3780 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3781 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3782
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003783- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3784 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003785
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003786- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3787 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3788 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3789 and __imul__.
3790
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003791- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003792 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3793 is called.
3794
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003795- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3796 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3797 interpreter was compiled.
3798
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003799- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3800 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3801 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003802 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003803 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3804 1, not 2.
3805
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003806- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3807 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3808 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3809 limit.
3810
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003811- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3812 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3813 bug #623464.
3814
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003815- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3816 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3817 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3818 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3819
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003820Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003821-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003822
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003823- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3824
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003825- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3826 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3827 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3828 with Python 2.3a2.
3829
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003830- os.path exposes getctime.
3831
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003832- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003833 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003834 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003835 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003836 unit tests of floating point results.
3837
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003838- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3839 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3840 has been increased.
3841
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003842- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3843 executed.
3844
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003845- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3846 postinstallation script.
3847
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003848- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3849 test the current module.
3850
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003851- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003852 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3853 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3854 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3855 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3856
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003857- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003858 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003859 Ward's Optik package.
3860
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003861- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3862 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3863 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3864 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3865
3866- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3867 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003868 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003869
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003870- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3871 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3872 shelf are binary pickles.
3873
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003874- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3875 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3876
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003877- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3878 modules are iterators now.
3879
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003880- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3881 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3882 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3883 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3884 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3885 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003886
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003887- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3888 with their entity value.
3889
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003890- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3891
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003892- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3893 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003894
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003895- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3896 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003897 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003898
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003899- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3900 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3901 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3902 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3903 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3904 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3905 main():
3906
3907 import locale
3908 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3909
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003910- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3911 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3912
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003913- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3914 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3915 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3916 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3917 to the new standard.
3918
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003919- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3920 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3921 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3922 an extension to the database.
3923
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003924- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3925 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3926 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3927 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003928 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003929
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003930- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003931 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003932
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003933- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3934 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3935 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3936 bounded integers.
3937
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003938- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3939 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3940 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3941 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3942 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3943 in existence.
3944
3945 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3946 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3947 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3948 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3949 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3950 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3951
3952 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3953 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3954 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3955 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3956
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003957- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3958 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3959 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3960
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003961- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3962
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003963- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3964 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3965 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3966 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3967
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003968- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3969 argument.
3970
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003971- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3972 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3973 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3974 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3975 [SF patch 560794].
3976
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003977- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3978 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3979 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003980 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3981 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3982 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003983
3984- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3985 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003986
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003987- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3988 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3989 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3990 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003991
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003992- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3993 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3994 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3995 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3996 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3997
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003998- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003999
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004000- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4001
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004002- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4003 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4004 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4005 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4006 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4007 identical to None.
4008
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004009- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4010 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4011 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4012 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4013 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4014 results now.
4015
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004016- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4017 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4018
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004019- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4020 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4021 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4022 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4023 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4024 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4025 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4026 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4027
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004028- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4029
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004030- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4031 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4032
4033- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4034 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4035 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4036 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4037 and other systems.
4038
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004039- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4040 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4041 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4042 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 +00004043 work well with these.
4044
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004045- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4046
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004047- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004048 connections.
4049
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004050- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4051 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4052 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4053
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004054- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4055 sets
4056
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004057- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4058 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4059 name.
4060
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004061- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4062 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4063 passed in.
4064
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004065- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004066 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004067 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4068 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004069
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004070- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4071
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004072- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4073
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004074- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4075 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4076 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4077
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004078- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4079 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4080 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4081 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004082 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004083
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004084- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004085 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004086 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004087
4088- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4089 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4090 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4091
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004092- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004093 the value of its expression argument.
4094
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004095- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4096 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4097 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4098
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004099- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4100 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4101 skipstone browser was included.
4102
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004103- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4104 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4105
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004106Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004107-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004108
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004109- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4110 names in addition to accepting file names.
4111
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004112- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4113 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4114 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4115 still used and useful.)
4116
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004117- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4118 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4119 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4120 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004121
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004122- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4123 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4124 the generated binary.
4125
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004126Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004127-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004128
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004129- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4130
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004131- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4132 except in the hands of experts.
4133
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004134- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004135 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4136 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4137 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004138
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004139- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4140 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4141 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4142 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4143 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4144 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4145 builds.
4146
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004147- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4148 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4149 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4150 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4151 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4152 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4153 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4154 new type.
4155
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004156- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004157
4158 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4159 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4160 positive infinities.
4161
4162 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4163 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4164 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4165 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4166 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4167 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4168 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4169
4170 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4171
4172 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4173
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004174- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4175 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4176 size of the executable.
4177
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004178- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4179 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4180 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4181 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004182
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004183- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4184
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004185- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4186 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4187 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004188
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004189- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4190 well as Unix.
4191
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004192- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4193 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4194 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4195 modules in the README file for details.
4196
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004197C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004198-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004199
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004200- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4201 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004202 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004203 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004204 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004205
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004206- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4207 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4208 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4209 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4210 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4211 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004212 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004213 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4214 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4215 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4216 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4217 aligned.)
4218
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004219- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4220 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4221 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4222
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004223- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4224 level.
4225
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004226- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4227 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4228 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4229 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4230 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4231
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004232- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4233 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4234 code.
4235
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004236- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4237 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4238 adjusting for negative indices.
4239
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004240- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4241 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4242 object.
4243
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004244- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4245 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4246 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4247
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004248- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4249 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004250
4251- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4252
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004253- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4254 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4255 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4256 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4257
4258- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4259
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004260- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004261
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004262- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004263 without going through the buffer API.
4264
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004265- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004266
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004267- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4268 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4269 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4270 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4271
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004272- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4273 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4274
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004275- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004276 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4277
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004278New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004279-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004280
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004281- OpenVMS is now supported.
4282
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004283- AtheOS is now supported.
4284
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004285- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4286
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004287- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4288
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004289Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004290-----
4291
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004292- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4293 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4294 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004295
4296Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004297-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004298
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004299- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4300 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4301 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4302 bugs.
4303 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004304 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004305 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4306 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004307 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004308
4309- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004310 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004311
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004312- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4313 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4314
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004315- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4316 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004317 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004318 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4319
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004320- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4321 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4322 use files" uninstall option).
4323
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004324- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4325
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004326- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4327 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4328
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004329- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4330 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4331 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4332
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004333- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4334 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4335 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4336 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4337 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004338 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4339 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4340 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004341
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004342- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004343 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004344 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4345 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4346 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4347 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4348 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4349 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4350 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4351 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4352 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4353 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4354 work around.
4355
4356- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4357 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4358 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4359 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4360 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4361 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4362 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4363 specified with O_CREAT too).
4364
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004365Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004366----
4367
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004368- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004369
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004370- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4371 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4372 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4373
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004374- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4375 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4376 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4377
4378- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4379 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4380 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4381 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4382 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4383 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4384 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4385 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004386
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004387- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4388 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4389 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004390
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004391- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4392 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4393 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4394 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4395 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004396
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004397- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4398 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4399 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004400
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004401- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4402 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004403
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004404- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4405 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4406 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4407 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4408 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004409
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004410- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4411 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4412 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4413
4414- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4415 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4416 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004417
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004418- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4419 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4420 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4421 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004422 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004423
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004424- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4425 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004426
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004427- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4428 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004429
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004430- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004431 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004432 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4433 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004434
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004435
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004436What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004437===============================
4438
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004439*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4440
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004441Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004442--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004443
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004444- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4445 with a custom metaclass.
4446
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004447Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004448-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004449
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004450- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4451 are proxies.
4452
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004453Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004454-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004455
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004456- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4457 very short strings.
4458
4459- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4460 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4461 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4462 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4463 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4464
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004465Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004466-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004467
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004468- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4469 close or delete time).
4470
4471- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4472 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4473
4474- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4475
4476- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004477 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004478
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004479Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004480-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004481
4482Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004483-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004484
4485C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004486-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004487
4488New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004489-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004490
4491Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004492-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004493
4494Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004495-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004496
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004497- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4498
4499- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4500 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4501
4502- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4503 deleted at process exit time.
4504
4505- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4506 in backslash.
4507
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004508Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004509----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004510
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004511- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4512 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4513 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4514
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004515
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004516What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004517===========================
4518
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004519*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4520
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004521Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004522--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004523
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004524- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4525 been extensively updated. See
4526
4527 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4528
4529 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4530
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004531- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4532 deleted!
4533
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004534- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4535 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4536 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4537 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4538 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4539
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004540- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4541
4542 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4543 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4544
4545 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4546 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4547 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4548 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4549 supported anyway.
4550
4551 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4552 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4553
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004554- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4555 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4556 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4557 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4558 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004559
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004560- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4561 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4562 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4563
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004564Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004565-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004566
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004567- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4568 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4569 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4570 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4571 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4572 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004573 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4574 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4575 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4576 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004577
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004578- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4579 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4580 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4581
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004582Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004583-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004584
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004585- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4586
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004587Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004588-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004589
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004590- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4591 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4592 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4593 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4594 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4595 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4596
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004597- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4598
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004599- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4600
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004601- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4602
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004603- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4604 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4605 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4606
4607- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4608
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004609Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004610-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004611
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004612- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4613 off a search on Google.
4614
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004615Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004616-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004617
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004618- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4619 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4620 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4621 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4622 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4623 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4624 other platforms should do likewise.
4625
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004626- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4627 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4628 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4629
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004630C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004631-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004632
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004633- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4634 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4635 producing key-value pairs.
4636
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004637- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004638 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004639 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4640 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4641 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4642 previously went unchallenged.
4643
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004644New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004645-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004646
4647Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004648-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004649
4650Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004651-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004652
4653Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004654----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004655
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004656- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4657 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004658
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004659- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4660 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4661 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4662 home.
4663
4664
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004665What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004666===========================
4667
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004668*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4669
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004670Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004671--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004672
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004673- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4674 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004675
4676 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004677 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004678
4679 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4680 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004681 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004682 This needs to be documented.
4683
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004684- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4685 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4686
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004687- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4688 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4689 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4690
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004691- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4692 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4693
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004694- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4695 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4696 class forbids it).
4697
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004698- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4699 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4700 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4701
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004702- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4703
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004704Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004705-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004706
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004707- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4708 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004709 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004710
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004711- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4712 (like 1 + '').
4713
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004714Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004715-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004716
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004717- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4718 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4719 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4720 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004721 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004722 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4723
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004724- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4725 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4726 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4727 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4728
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004729- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4730 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004731 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4732 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4733 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004734
4735- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4736 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004737
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004738- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4739 bytes on its input.
4740
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004741Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004742-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004743
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004744- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004745 convenience function.
4746
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004747- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4748 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4749 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004750 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4751 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4752 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4753 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4754 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4755 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004756
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004757- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4758 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4759 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4760 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4761
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004762- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4763 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4764 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4765
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004766- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4767 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4768 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4769 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4770
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004771- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4772 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004773 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004774 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4775 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4776 new -l and -e options.
4777
4778- statcache is now deprecated.
4779
4780- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4781 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004782 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004783 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4784 time properly taken into account.
4785
4786- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4787 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4788 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4789 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4790
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004791Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004792-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004793
4794Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004795-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004796
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004797- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4798 is built with libdb3 if available.
4799
4800- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4801
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004802C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004803-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004804
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004805- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4806 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4807 PySequence_Size().
4808
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004809- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4810
4811- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4812 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4813 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4814
4815- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4816 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4817
4818- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4819 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4820
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004821New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004822-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004823
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004824- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4825 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4826
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004827- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4828 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4829
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004830- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4831
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004832Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004833-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004834
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004835- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4836 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4837
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004838Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004839-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004840
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004841Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004842----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004843
4844- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4845 removed completely in the next release.
4846
4847- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4848 OSX.
4849
4850- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4851 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4852
4853- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4854
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004855
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004856What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004857===========================
4858
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004859*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4860
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004861Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004862--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004863
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004864- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004865 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004866 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004867 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4868 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004869 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4870 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004871 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4872 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004873
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004874- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4875 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4876
4877- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4878 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4879
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004880Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004881-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004882
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004883- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4884 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4885 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4886 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4887 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4888 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4889 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4890 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4891
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004892- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4893 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4894 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4895 example).
4896
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004897- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004898 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004899 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004900 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004901
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004902- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4903 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4904 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004905 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004906
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004907- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4908 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4909 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4910 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4911 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4912 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4913
4914 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4915
4916 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4917
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004918Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004919-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004920
4921- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4922
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004923- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4924
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004925- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4926 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004927
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004928- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4929 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4930 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4931 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4932 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4933 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004934 attributes.
4935
4936- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4937 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4938 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004939
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004940- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4941 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4942 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004943
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004944- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4945 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4946 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004947 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4948 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4949
4950- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4951 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004952
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004953Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004954-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004955
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004956- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4957 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4958
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004959- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4960 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4961 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4962 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4963
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004964- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4965 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4966 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4967 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4968
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004969 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4970 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4971 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4972 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4973 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4974 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4975 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4976 without losing information).
4977
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004978- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004979 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4980 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4981 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4982 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4983 module).
4984
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004985 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004986 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4987 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4988 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4989 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004990
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004991- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004992 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4993 encoding.
4994
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004995- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4996 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4997
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004998- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004999 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5000
5001- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5002 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5003 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5004 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5005
5006- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5007
5008- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5009 ON, and OFF.
5010
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005011- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5012 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5013
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005014Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005015-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005016
5017- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5018 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5019 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005020
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005021- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5022 been added: -X and -E.
5023
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005024Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005025-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005026
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005027- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5028 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5029
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005030C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005031-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005032
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005033- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5034 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5035 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5036 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5037 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5038
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005039- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5040 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5041 as long) arguments.
5042
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005043- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5044 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5045 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5046 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5047 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5048 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5049
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005050- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5051 input.
5052
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005053New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005054-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005055
5056Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005057-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005058
5059Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005060-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005061
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005062- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5063 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5064 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5065
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005066- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5067 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5068 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005069 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005070
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005071 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5072 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5073 import signal
5074 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005075
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005076 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005077 while 1:
5078 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005079 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005080 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5081 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5082 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5083 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005084
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005085
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005086What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5087===========================
5088
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005089*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5090
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005091Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005092--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005093
5094- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5095 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5096 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5097
5098- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5099 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5100 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5101 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5102 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5103 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5104 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005105
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005106- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005107 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005108 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5109 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5110 associate a docstring with a property.
5111
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005112- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5113 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5114 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5115 other built-in object types.
5116
5117- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5118 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5119 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5120 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5121 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5122
5123- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5124 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5125
5126- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5127 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005128 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005129 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5130 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5131 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5132 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5133 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5134
5135- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5136 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5137 class.
5138
5139- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5140 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5141 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5142 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5143
5144- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5145 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5146 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5147 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5148
5149- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5150 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5151
5152- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5153 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5154 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5155 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5156 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005157 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005158 with the same value as s.
5159
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005160- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5161
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005162Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005163----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005164
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005165- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5166
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005167- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5168 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5169 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5170 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5171 objects.
5172
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005173- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5174 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005175 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5176 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5177
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005178- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5179 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5180 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5181
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005182Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005183-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005184
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005185- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5186 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5187 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5188 by the instances.
5189
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005190- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5191 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5192 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5193
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005194- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5195 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5196 before the entire comparison is complete.
5197
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005198- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5199 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5200 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5201
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005202- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5203 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5204 getwriter().
5205
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005206- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5207 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5208
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005209- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005210 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5211 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5212
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005213- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5214 iterable object.
5215
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005216- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5217 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005218
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005219- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5220 authentication.
5221
5222- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5223 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005224
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005225- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005226 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5227 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5228 a sample driver.)
5229
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005230Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005231-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005232
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005233- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5234 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5235 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5236 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5237 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5238 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5239 kernel has large file support.
5240
5241- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5242 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5243 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5244 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5245 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5246
5247- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5248 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5249 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5250
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005251C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005252-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005253
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005254- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5255 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5256
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005257New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005258-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005259
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005260- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5261 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5262
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005263Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005264-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005265
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005266- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5267 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5268 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5269 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5270 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5271
5272- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5273 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5274 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5275 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5276
5277- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5278 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5279
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005280Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005281-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005282
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005283- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005284 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5285 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005286
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005287
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005288What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5289===========================
5290
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005291*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5292
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005293Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005294----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005295
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005296- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5297 big to represent as a C double.
5298
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005299- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5300 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5301 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5302 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5303 restriction).
5304
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005305- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5306 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5307 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5308 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5309 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5310
5311 >>> dir([])
5312 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5313 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5314 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5315 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5316 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5317 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5318 'reverse', 'sort']
5319
5320 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5321
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005322- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005323 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5324 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5325 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5326 OverflowError exception.
5327
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005328- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005329 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005330 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5331 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5332 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5333 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5334 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005335 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005336 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5337 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5338
5339 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5340 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5341 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5342 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005343
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005344- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005345 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5346 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5347 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5348 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5349 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5350 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5351 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5352 once it is created.
5353
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005354- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5355 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5356 (key, value) pairs.
5357
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005358- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005359 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5360 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5361
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005362- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5363 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5364 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5365 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5366 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005367
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005368- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005369 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5370 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5371
5372 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5373
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005374- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005375 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5376
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005377Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005378-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005379
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005380- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005381 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5382 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005383
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005384- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5385 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5386 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5387 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5388 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5389 in this area anymore).
5390
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005391- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5392 threading.Timer.
5393
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005394- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5395 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5396
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005397- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005398 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5399
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005400- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005401 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5402 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5403 converted to Python longs.
5404
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005405- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005406 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5407
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005408- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5409 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5410 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5411
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005412Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005413-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005414
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005415- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5416 division operators as per PEP 238.
5417
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005418Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005419-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005420
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005421- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5422 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5423 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5424 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5425
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005426C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005427-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005428
5429- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005430
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005431- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5432 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005433 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005434
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005435 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5436 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005437 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005438 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005439
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005440- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005441 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5442 module:
5443
5444 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005445
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005446 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5447 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005448
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005449 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5450 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005451
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005452 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5453
5454 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5455
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005456- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005457 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5458 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5459 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005460
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005461New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005462-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005463
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005464- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5465 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5466 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5467 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5468 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005469
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005470Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005471-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005472
5473Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005474-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005475
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005476- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5477 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5478 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5479 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005480 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5481 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5482 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5483 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5484 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005485
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005486- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005487 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5488
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005489
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005490What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5491===========================
5492
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005493*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5494
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005495Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005496-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005497
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005498- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5499 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5500
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005501- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5502 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5503 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005504
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005505- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5506 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5507 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5508 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005509
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005510- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5511
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005512- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005513
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005514Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005515-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005516
5517- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005518 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005519 the module docstring for details.
5520
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005521Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005522-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005523
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005524- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005525 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5526 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5527 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005528
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005529- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5530 Nick Mathewson.
5531
5532Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005533----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005534
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005535- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5536 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5537 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5538 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5539 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5540 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5541 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5542 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5543
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005544- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5545 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5546 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5547 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5548
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005549- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5550 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5551 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5552 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5553 come a long way).
5554
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005555- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5556 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5557 write filters for these warnings).
5558
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005559- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5560 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5561 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5562 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5563 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5564
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005565- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5566 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5567 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5568 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5569 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5570 older distribution.
5571
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005572Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005573-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005574
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005575- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5576 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005577 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005578
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005579- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5580 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5581 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5582
5583- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5584
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005585- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5586
5587- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5588
5589- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5590
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005591- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005592
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005593- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5594
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005595New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005596-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005597
5598C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005599-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005600
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005601- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5602 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5603 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5604 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5605 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5606 against buffer overruns.
5607
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005608- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005609 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5610 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005611 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5612 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5613 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5614
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005615- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5616 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5617 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5618 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5619 deprecated.
5620
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005621Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005622-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005623
5624- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5625 relevant is found.
5626
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005627
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005628What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005629===========================
5630
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005631*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5632
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005633Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005634----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005635
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005636- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5637 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5638 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5639 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5640 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5641 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5642 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5643 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005644 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005645 repaired.
5646
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005647- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005648 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005649 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5650 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5651 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5652 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5653 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5654 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5655 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5656 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5657
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005658- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5659 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5660 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5661 leading BMO character).
5662
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005663- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5664 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5665 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5666
5667 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5668 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5669 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005670
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005671 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5672 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5673 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5674 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5675 for various simple to use conversions.
5676
5677 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5678 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5679
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005680 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5681 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5682 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5683 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5684 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5685 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5686 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5687 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5688 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5689 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5690 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5691 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5692 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5693 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5694 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005695
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005696- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5697 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5698 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005699 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005700 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005701
5702 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005703 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5704 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5705 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5706 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5707 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005708 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5709 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005710
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005711 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5712 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5713 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005714 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005715
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005716- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5717 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5718 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5719 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5720 floating arithmetic,
5721
5722 x = 9007199254740992.0
5723 print long(x)
5724
5725 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5726 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5727 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5728 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5729 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5730 functions are of good quality).
5731
5732 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5733 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5734 algorithms to break.
5735
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005736- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5737 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5738 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5739 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5740 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5741 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5742 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5743 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5744 order.
5745
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005746- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5747 operation along the most common code paths.
5748
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005749- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5750 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5751
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005752- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5753 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5754 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5755 {}.update(UserDict())
5756
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005757- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5758 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5759 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5760 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5761 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5762 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5763 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5764 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5765
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005766- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005767 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005768
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005769 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005770 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5771 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005772 join() method of strings
5773 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005774 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5775 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005776 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005777 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005778
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005779- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5780 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5781
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005782- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5783 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5784
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005785- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5786 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5787 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5788 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5789
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005790- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5791 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005792 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005793 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5794 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005795
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005796- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5797
5798
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005799Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005800-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005801
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005802- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005803 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005804 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5805 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5806
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005807- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5808 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5809
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005810- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5811 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5812 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5813 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5814
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005815- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5816 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5817 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5818
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005819- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5820
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005821- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5822
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005823- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5824 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5825 that are still imported into string.py).
5826
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005827- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5828
5829- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5830 Now it does.
5831
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005832- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5833
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005834- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5835 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5836 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5837 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5838 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005839 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5840 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005841
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005842- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5843 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5844 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5845 'help(object)'.
5846
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005847Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005848-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005849
5850- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005851 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005852 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5853 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5854
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005855- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005856 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5857 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005858
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005859C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005860-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005861
5862- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5863 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005864
5865----
5866
5867**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**