blob: 80691421cafed4ebc27f0b1c7f8bb612f47e8b66 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Georg Brandlabd1ff82006-03-18 07:59:59 +000015- Previously, Python code had no easy way to access the contents of a
16 cell object. Now, a ``cell_contents`` attribute has been added
17 (closes patch #1170323).
18
Tim Peterscf79aac2006-03-16 01:14:46 +000019- Patch #1123430: Python's small-object allocator now returns an arena to
20 the system ``free()`` when all memory within an arena becomes unused
21 again. Prior to Python 2.5, arenas (256KB chunks of memory) were never
22 freed. Some applications will see a drop in virtual memory size now,
23 especially long-running applications that, from time to time, temporarily
24 use a large number of small objects. Note that when Python returns an
25 arena to the platform C's ``free()``, there's no guarantee that the
26 platform C will in turn return that memory to the operating system. The
27 effect of the patch is to stop making that impossible, and in tests it
28 appears to be effective at least on Microsoft C and gcc-based systems.
29 Thanks to Evan Jones for hard work and patience.
30
Georg Brandl533ff6f2006-03-08 18:09:27 +000031- Patch #1434038: property() now uses the getter's docstring if there is
32 no "doc" argument given. This makes it possible to legitimately use
33 property() as a decorator to produce a read-only property.
34
Guido van Rossum9aa37ab2006-03-07 18:54:08 +000035- PEP 357, patch 1436368: add an __index__ method to int/long and a matching
36 nb_index slot to the PyNumberMethods struct. The slot is consulted instead
37 of requiring an int or long in slicing and a few other contexts, enabling
38 other objects (e.g. Numeric Python's integers) to be used as slice indices.
39
Neal Norwitz995acdf2006-03-07 05:01:00 +000040- Fixed various bugs reported by Coverity's Prevent tool.
41
Brett Cannonbf364092006-03-01 04:25:17 +000042- PEP 352, patch #1104669: Make exceptions new-style objects. Introduced the
43 new exception base class, BaseException, which has a new message attribute.
44 KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit to directly inherit from BaseException now.
45 Raising a string exception now raises a DeprecationWarning.
46
Thomas Woutersfb609f42006-02-28 16:37:25 +000047- Patch #1438387, PEP 328: relative and absolute imports. Imports can now be
48 explicitly relative, using 'from .module import name' to mean 'from the same
49 package as this module is in. Imports without dots still default to the
50 old relative-then-absolute, unless 'from __future__ import
51 absolute_import' is used.
52
Brett Cannona7446e32006-02-27 23:39:10 +000053- Properly check if 'warnings' raises an exception (usually when a filter set
54 to "error" is triggered) when raising a warning for raising string
55 exceptions.
56
Neal Norwitz0023a2f2006-02-27 23:24:48 +000057- CO_GENERATOR_ALLOWED is no longer defined, this behavior is the default.
58 The name was removed from Include/code.h.
59
Neal Norwitzeb651252006-02-27 16:47:12 +000060- PEP 308: conditional expressions were added (x if cond else y).
61
Guido van Rossum1968ad32006-02-25 22:38:04 +000062- Patch 1433928:
63 - The copy module now "copies" function objects (as atomic objects).
64 - dict.__getitem__ now looks for a __missing__ hook before raising
65 KeyError.
66
Tim Peters84ef21c2006-02-28 20:39:06 +000067- PEP 343: with statement implemented. Needs ``from __future__ import
68 with_statement``. Use of 'with' as a variable will generate a warning.
69 Use of 'as' as a variable will also generate a warning (unless it's
Neal Norwitz055ec242006-02-28 20:06:49 +000070 part of an import statement).
Guido van Rossum1a5e21e2006-02-28 21:57:43 +000071 The following objects have __context__ methods:
72 - The built-in file type.
73 - The thread.LockType type.
74 - The following types defined by the threading module:
75 Lock, RLock, Condition, Semaphore, BoundedSemaphore.
76 - The decimal.Context class.
Guido van Rossumc2e20742006-02-27 22:32:47 +000077
Marc-André Lemburgfe4b34c2006-02-19 15:22:22 +000078- Fix the encodings package codec search function to only search
79 inside its own package. Fixes problem reported in patch #1433198.
80
81 Note: Codec packages should implement and register their own
82 codec search function. PEP 100 has the details.
83
Martin v. Löwis18e16552006-02-15 17:27:45 +000084- PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type.
85
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000086- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
87 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
88 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
89
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000090- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
91 configure would break checking curses.h.
92
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000093- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
94 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
95
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000096- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
97
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000098- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
99
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +0000100- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
101
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +0000102- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
103 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
104
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +0000105- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
Barry Warsawd3c38ff2006-03-07 09:46:03 +0000106 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.subversion. Build number
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +0000107 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
108
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +0000109- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
110 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +0000111 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +0000112
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +0000113- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
114 now encodes backslash correctly.
115
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +0000116- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
117
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +0000118- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
119 and long longs.
120
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +0000121- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
122 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
123 message in this case.
124
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +0000125- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
126 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
127 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
128 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
129 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
130
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000131- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +0000132
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000133- Speed up some Unicode operations.
134
Martin v. Löwisbd260da2006-02-26 19:42:26 +0000135- A new AST parser implementation was completed. The abstract
136 syntax tree is available for read-only (non-compile) access
Martin v. Löwis577b5b92006-02-27 15:23:19 +0000137 to Python code; an _ast module was added.
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000138
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +0000139- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +0000140 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
141
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +0000142- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
143
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +0000144- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
145 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
146
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +0000147- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
148
149- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
150
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +0000151- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
152 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
153 was empty.
154
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +0000155- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
156 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
157
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +0000158- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +0000159 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +0000160
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +0000161- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
162 codes.
163
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +0000164- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
165 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
166 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
167
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +0000168- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
169 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
170
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +0000171- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +0000172 (fixes bug #1119418).
173
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000174- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
175
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000176- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
177 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
178
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000179- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
180 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
181 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
182
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000183- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
184
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000185- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
186 reference counts in some error exit cases.
187
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000188- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
189 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
190 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
191 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
192 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
193 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
194 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
195 realloc.
196
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000197- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
198 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
199
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000200- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
201 like their int counterparts.
202
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000203- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
204 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
205 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
206 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
207 for a longer write-up of the problem).
208
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000209- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
210 serializing floats.
211
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000212- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
213 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
214 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
215
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000216- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
217 278.
218
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000219- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
220 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
221 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
222 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000223 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000224 PyNumber_*().
225 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
226
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000227- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
228 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
229 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
230 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
231
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000232- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
233 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
234 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
235 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
236 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
237
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000238- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
239 disabled caused a crash.
240
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000241- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
242 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
243
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000244- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000245 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
246
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000247- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
248
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000249- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000250 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
251 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
252 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000253
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000254- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
255
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000256- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
257 returning None.
258
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000259- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000260 ('\') with a specific error message.
261
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000262- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
263
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000264- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
265 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
266
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000267- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000268 an ferror() call.
269
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000270- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
271 list.sort().
272
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000273- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
274 (2+3) --> (5).
275
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000276- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
277
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000278- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
279 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000280
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000281- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
282 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
283 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
284
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000285- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
286 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
287 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
288
Tim Petersf4e69282006-02-27 17:15:31 +0000289- Patch #1413181: changed ``PyThreadState_Delete()`` to forget about the
290 current thread state when the auto-GIL-state machinery knows about
291 it (since the thread state is being deleted, continuing to remember it
292 can't help, but can hurt if another thread happens to get created with
293 the same thread id).
294
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000295Extension Modules
296-----------------
297
Anthony Baxterfa869072006-03-20 05:21:58 +0000298- Patch #1231053: The audioop module now supports encoding/decoding of alaw.
299 In addition, the existing ulaw code was updated.
300
Georg Brandlbc45a3f2006-03-17 19:17:34 +0000301- RFE #567972: Socket objects' family, type and proto properties are
302 now exposed via new get...() methods.
303
Neal Norwitz10be10c2006-03-16 06:50:13 +0000304- Everything under lib-old was removed. This includes the following modules:
305 Para, addpack, cmp, cmpcache, codehack, dircmp, dump, find, fmt, grep,
306 lockfile, newdir, ni, packmail, poly, rand, statcache, tb, tzparse,
307 util, whatsound, whrandom, zmod
308
309- The following modules were removed: regsub, reconvert, regex, regex_syntax.
310
311- re and sre were swapped, so help(re) provides full help. importing sre
Neal Norwitzefbeaef2006-03-16 06:40:39 +0000312 is deprecated. The undocumented re.engine variable no longer exists.
313
Hye-Shik Changabb903f2006-03-13 10:20:08 +0000314- Bug #1448490: Fixed a bug that ISO-2022 codecs could not handle
315 SS2 (single-shift 2) escape sequences correctly.
316
Martin v. Löwis480f1bb2006-03-09 23:38:20 +0000317- The unicodedata module was updated to the 4.1 version of the Unicode
318 database. The 3.2 version is still available as unicodedata.db_3_2_0
319 for applications that require this specific version (such as IDNA).
320
Neal Norwitzb62c4332006-03-04 18:35:47 +0000321- The timing module is no longer built by default. It was deprecated
322 in PEP 4 in Python 2.0 or earlier.
323
Guido van Rossum1968ad32006-02-25 22:38:04 +0000324- Patch 1433928: Added a new type, defaultdict, to the collections module.
325 This uses the new __missing__ hook behavior added to dict (see above).
326
Georg Brandldbd83392006-02-20 09:42:33 +0000327- Bug #854823: socketmodule now builds on Sun platforms even when
328 INET_ADDRSTRLEN is not defined.
329
Georg Brandlf4f44152006-02-18 22:29:33 +0000330- Patch #1393157: os.startfile() now has an optional argument to specify
331 a "command verb" to invoke on the file.
332
Neal Norwitz082b2df2006-02-07 07:04:46 +0000333- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
334 is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
335
Neal Norwitz0e6bc8c2006-02-05 05:45:43 +0000336- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
337 mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
338 mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
339
Martin v. Löwis57a34e82006-02-04 19:12:37 +0000340- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
341 than the system default domain.
342
Martin v. Löwis14694662006-02-03 12:54:16 +0000343- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
344 are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
345 WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
346
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000347- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
348
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000349- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
350 before the env.
351
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000352- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
353
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000354- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
355
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000356- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
357 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
358 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
359
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000360- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
361 without prior setting of the userptr.
362
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000363- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
364
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000365- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
366
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000367- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
368 problem on AIX.
369
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000370- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
371
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000372- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
373
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000374- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
375
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000376- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
377 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
378
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000379- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
380 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
381
382- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
383
384- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000385
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000386- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
387 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
388
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000389- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
390
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000391- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
392 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
393
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000394- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
395 returns in cStringIO.c.
396
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000397- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
398 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
399
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000400- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
401
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000402- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
403
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000404- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
405 the file system encoding.
406
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000407- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
408 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000409
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000410- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
411
412- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000413 line without newlines.
414
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000415- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
416 on Windows.
417
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000418- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000419 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
420
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000421- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
422 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
423 for large or negative values.
424
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000425- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000426 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000427
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000428- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
429
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000430- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
431 if available on the platform.
432
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000433- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
434 available on the platform.
435
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000436- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
437 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
438
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000439- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
440
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000441- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
442 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
443 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
444
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000445- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
446
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000447- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
448 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
449
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000450- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000451 file size.
452
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000453- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
454
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000455- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
456 {remove_history,replace_history}
457
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000458- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
459 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000460
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000461- stat_float_times is now True.
462
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000463- array.array objects are now picklable.
464
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000465- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
466 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
467
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000468- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
469 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
470 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
471
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000472- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
473 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000474
475Library
476-------
477
Walter Dörwaldabb02e52006-03-15 11:35:15 +0000478- Patch #1436130: codecs.lookup() now returns a CodecInfo object (a subclass
479 of tuple) that provides incremental decoders and encoders (a way to use
480 stateful codecs without the stream API). Functions
481 codecs.getincrementaldecoder() and codecs.getincrementalencoder() have
482 been added.
483
Walter Dörwald067db482006-03-15 22:17:27 +0000484- Patch #1359365: Calling next() on a closed StringIO.String object raises
485 a ValueError instead of a StopIteration now (like file and cString.String do).
486 cStringIO.StringIO.isatty() will raise a ValueError now if close() has been
487 called before (like file and StringIO.StringIO do).
Walter Dörwald197e8322006-03-15 22:13:13 +0000488
Martin v. Löwis04824ce2006-03-10 21:26:16 +0000489- A regrtest option -w was added to re-run failed tests in verbose mode.
490
Georg Brandle2b46772006-03-09 23:22:43 +0000491- Patch #1446372: quit and exit can now be called from the interactive
492 interpreter to exit.
493
Barry Warsawd3c38ff2006-03-07 09:46:03 +0000494- The function get_count() has been added to the gc module, and gc.collect()
495 grew an optional 'generation' argument.
496
Martin v. Löwisfbab90e2006-03-05 13:36:04 +0000497- A library msilib to generate Windows Installer files, and a distutils
498 command bdist_msi have been added.
499
Guido van Rossum1a5e21e2006-02-28 21:57:43 +0000500- PEP 343: new module contextlib.py defines decorator @contextmanager
501 and helpful context managers nested() and closing().
502
Martin v. Löwis415ed932006-02-27 19:56:30 +0000503- The compiler package now supports future imports after the module docstring.
504
Georg Brandl8f7c54e2006-02-20 08:40:38 +0000505- Bug #1413790: zipfile now sanitizes absolute archive names that are
506 not allowed by the specs.
507
Georg Brandlc98eeed2006-02-19 14:57:47 +0000508- Patch #1215184: FileInput now can be given an opening hook which can
509 be used to control how files are opened.
510
Georg Brandlc029f872006-02-19 14:12:34 +0000511- Patch #1212287: fileinput.input() now has a mode parameter for
512 specifying the file mode input files should be opened with.
513
Georg Brandl67e9fb92006-02-19 13:56:17 +0000514- Patch #1215184: fileinput now has a fileno() function for getting the
515 current file number.
516
Georg Brandl602b9ba2006-02-19 13:26:36 +0000517- Patch #1349274: gettext.install() now optionally installs additional
518 translation functions other than _() in the builtin namespace.
519
Georg Brandle4662172006-02-19 09:51:27 +0000520- Patch #1337756: fileinput now accepts Unicode filenames.
521
Georg Brandl7b4e7c22006-02-18 21:10:56 +0000522- Patch #1373643: The chunk module can now read chunks larger than
523 two gigabytes.
524
Georg Brandl21dd1af2006-02-17 13:35:13 +0000525- Patch #1417555: SimpleHTTPServer now returns Last-Modified headers.
526
Georg Brandlbd3bc4d2006-02-17 09:52:53 +0000527- Bug #1430298: It is now possible to send a mail with an empty
528 return address using smtplib.
529
Georg Brandl0e1abe22006-02-17 09:48:14 +0000530- Bug #1432260: The names of lambda functions are now properly displayed
531 in pydoc.
Georg Brandl501dd0d2006-02-17 09:45:40 +0000532
Martin v. Löwis00756902006-02-05 17:09:41 +0000533- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
534 unless the system is Win32.
535
Tim Petersda1329b2006-02-27 16:50:01 +0000536- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000537 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
538 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
539
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000540- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
541
542- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000543
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000544- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
545
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000546- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000547 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000548
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000549- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
550 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000551
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000552- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
553
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000554- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
555
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000556- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
557 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
558 LoadError subclasses IOError.
559
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000560- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000561 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
562 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
563 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
564 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
565
566 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
567 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
568 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
569 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
570 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000571
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000572- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
573 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
574 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
575
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000576- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
577
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000578- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
579
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000580- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
581 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
582 illegal argument)
583
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000584- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
585 is an error in the format string.
586
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000587- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
588
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000589- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000590 "parent" argument.
591
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000592- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
593 for padding.
594
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000595- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
596 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
597
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000598- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
599 to get the correct encoding.
600
601- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
602 languages.
603
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000604- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
605
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000606- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
607
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000608- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
609
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000610- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
611 functionality.
612
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000613- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
614
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000615- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
616 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
617
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000618- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
619 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
620 match the Content-Length header.
621
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000622- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
623
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000624- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
625 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000626 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000627
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000628- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
629
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000630- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
631
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000632- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
633 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
634
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000635- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
636 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
637 Tkdnd.
638
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000639- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
640 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
641
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000642- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
643 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
644
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000645- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000646 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
647
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000648- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
649 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
650
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000651- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
652 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
653
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000654- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000655 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000656
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000657- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
658
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000659- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
660 error messages.
661
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000662- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
663
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000664- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
665 Bug #1224621.
666
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000667- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
668 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
669 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
670 terminates by raising StopIteration.
671
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000672- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
673
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000674- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
675 component of the path.
676
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000677- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
678 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
679 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
680 class at all.
681
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000682- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
683 files to PyPI.
684
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000685- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
686 them to PyPI.
687
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000688- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
689 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
690 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
691 work as expected.
692
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000693- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
694 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
695
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000696- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000697 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
698
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000699- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
700
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000701- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
702 to build.
703
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000704- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
705 symbolic links on Windows.
706
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000707- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000708 profile.py if available.
709
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000710- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
711
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000712- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
713 in LWPCookieJar.
714
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000715- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
716
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000717- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
718
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000719- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
720
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000721- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
722
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000723- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
724
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000725- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
726
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000727- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
728
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000729- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
730
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000731- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
732 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
733 be exploited in various ways.
734
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000735- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000736 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
737
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000738- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
739 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
740
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000741- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000742 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
743
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000744- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
745
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000746- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
747
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000748- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
749
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000750- Enhancements to the csv module:
751
752 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000753 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000754 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000755 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
756 reporting.
757 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
758 dictates.
759 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000760 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000761 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000762 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
763 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000764 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
765 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000766 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000767 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
768 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
769 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
770 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
771 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
772 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
773 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
774 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
775 without first creating a dialect class.
776 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
777 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
778 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000779 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000780 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
781 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000782 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
783 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
784 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
785 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000786 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
787 This has been fixed.
788
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000789- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
790 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
791 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
792 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
793
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000794- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
795
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000796- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
797 (Bug #951915).
798
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000799- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
800 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
801 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000802 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000803
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000804- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
805
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000806- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
807 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
808
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000809- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
810
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000811- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
812
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000813- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
814
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000815- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
816
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000817- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
818
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000819- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
820 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
821 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
822
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000823- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000824 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000825
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000826- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
827 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
828 tokenizer with very long source lines.
829
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000830- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
831 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
832 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000833
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000834- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
835 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000836
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000837- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
838 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
839
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000840- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
841 correctly.
842
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000843- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
844 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
845 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
846 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
847 between two lines.
848
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000849- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
850 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
851 handlers.
852
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000853- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000854 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
855 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000856
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000857- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
858 considering it exactly like a '*'.
859
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000860- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
861 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000862
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000863- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
864
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000865- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
866 touch the recursion limit.
867
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000868Build
869-----
870
Martin v. Löwis86d66262006-02-17 08:40:11 +0000871- Patch #1432345: Make python compile on DragonFly.
872
Martin v. Löwis856bf9a2006-02-14 20:42:55 +0000873- Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added.
874
Martin v. Löwisa55e55e2006-02-11 15:55:14 +0000875- Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library.
876
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000877- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
878
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000879- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
880 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
881
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000882- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
883
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000884- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
885 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
886
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000887- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
888 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
889
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000890- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
891 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
892 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000893 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000894
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000895- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
896 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
897 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
898
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000899- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
900
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000901- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
902 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
903
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000904- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
905 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
906 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
907 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
908 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
909 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
910 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
911 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
912
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000913- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
914 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
915 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
916 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
917
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000918C API
919-----
920
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000921- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
922
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000923- Removed PyRange_New().
924
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000925- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
926 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
927 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
928 mappings.
929
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000930
931Tests
932-----
933
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000934- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000935
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000936- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
937 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
938
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000939
940Documentation
941-------------
942
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000943- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
944
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000945- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
946 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
947
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000948- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
949
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000950- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
951
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000952- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
953
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000954- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
955
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000956- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
957
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000958- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
959
960- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
961
962- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
963
964- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
965
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000966- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
967 Closes bug #1166582.
968
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000969- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
970 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
971 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
972
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000973Mac
974---
975
976
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000977New platforms
978-------------
979
980- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
981
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000982
983Tools/Demos
984-----------
985
Brett Cannonacde7342006-03-01 04:28:00 +0000986- Created Misc/Vim/vim_syntax.py to auto-generate a python.vim file in that
987 directory for syntax highlighting in Vim. Vim directory was added and placed
988 vimrc to it (was previous up a level).
989
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000990- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
991 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
992 source files that need an encoding declaration.
993 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
994
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000995- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
996
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000997- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000998
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000999- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
1000 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00001001
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +00001002What's New in Python 2.4 final?
1003===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +00001004
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +00001005*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +00001006
1007Core and builtins
1008-----------------
1009
1010- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
1011 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
1012 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
1013
1014
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +00001015What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
1016==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001017
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +00001018*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001019
1020Core and builtins
1021-----------------
1022
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +00001023- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
1024 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
1025 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
1026
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001027
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +00001028Library
1029-------
1030
1031- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
1032 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
1033 raised is re-raised.
1034
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +00001035- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
1036 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
1037
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +00001038- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
1039 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
1040 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
1041 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
1042 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
1043 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
1044 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
1045 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
1046 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
1047 by the slice are recomputed now.
1048
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +00001049- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +00001050
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001051Build
1052-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +00001053
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +00001054- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
1055 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
1056 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001057
1058C API
1059-----
1060
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +00001061- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
1062
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001063
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001064What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
1065================================
1066
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +00001067*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001068
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001069License
1070-------
1071
1072The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
1073is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
1074changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
1075Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
1076intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
1077durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
1078the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
1079License::
1080
1081 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
1082
1083says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
1084to Python 2.1.1.
1085
1086The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
1087License Version 2.
1088
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001089Core and builtins
1090-----------------
1091
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +00001092- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
1093 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
1094 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
1095 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
1096 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
1097 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
1098 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +00001099 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +00001100 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
1101 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
1102
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +00001103- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001104
1105Extension Modules
1106-----------------
1107
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +00001108- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
1109 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
1110 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
1111 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001112
1113Library
1114-------
1115
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +00001116- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
1117 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
1118 returned.
1119
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +00001120- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
1121
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +00001122- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
1123 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
1124
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +00001125- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
1126
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +00001127- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
1128 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001129
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +00001130- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
1131
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +00001132- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
1133
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +00001134- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +00001135 the source code is updated and reloaded.
1136
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001137Build
1138-----
1139
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +00001140- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001141
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001142What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
1143================================
1144
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +00001145*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001146
1147Core and builtins
1148-----------------
1149
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001150- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +00001151 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
1152
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +00001153- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
1154 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
1155 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
1156 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
1157
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001158- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
1159 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
1160
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +00001161- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
1162 constant.
1163
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001164- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
1165 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
1166 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
1167 large), and to anomalies such as
1168 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
1169 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
1170 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
1171 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001172
1173Extension modules
1174-----------------
1175
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +00001176- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
1177 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001178 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
1179 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
1180 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001181
1182Library
1183-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001184
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001185- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001186 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001187 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
1188 --swig-cpp.
1189
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +00001190- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
1191 it is set.
1192
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +00001193- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +00001194
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +00001195- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1196 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1197 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1198 Closes bug #1039270.
1199
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001200- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001201
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001202 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001203 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1204 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1205 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1206 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1207 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1208 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1209 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1210 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1211 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1212 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1213 + Updates to documentation.
1214
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001215- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1216 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1217 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1218 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1219
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001220- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001221
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001222- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1223 applications should use the getmember function.
1224
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001225- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1226
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001227- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1228 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1229 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1230 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1231 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1232 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1233 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1234 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1235 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1236
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001237- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1238 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001239 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001240
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001241- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1242 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1243 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1244 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1245 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1246 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1247 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1248 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001249
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001250- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1251 the new public features (of which there are many).
1252
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001253- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001254 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1255 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1256 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1257 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001258 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001259
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001260- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1261
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001262- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1263 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1264 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1265 options.
1266
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001267- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1268 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1269 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1270 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1271 conditions under which non-string values work.
1272
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001273Build
1274-----
1275
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001276- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1277 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1278 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1279
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001280- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1281 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1282 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1283 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1284 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001285
1286C API
1287-----
1288
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001289- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1290 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1291
1292- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1293
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001294- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1295 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1296 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1297 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1298 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1299 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1300 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1301 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1302 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1303
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001304- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1305
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001306- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1307 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1308 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001309
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001310Tests
1311-----
1312
1313- test__locale ported to unittest
1314
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001315Mac
1316---
1317
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001318- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1319 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1320 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001321
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001322Tools/Demos
1323-----------
1324
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001325- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1326 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1327 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1328 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1329 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001330
1331
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001332What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1333=================================
1334
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001335*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001336
1337Core and builtins
1338-----------------
1339
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001340- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001341 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1342
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001343- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1344 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1345 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1346 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1347 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1348 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1349 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1350 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001351 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1352 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1353 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1354 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1355 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001356
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001357- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1358 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1359 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1360 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1361 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1362
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001363- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1364
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001365- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1366 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1367
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001368- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1369 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1370 modified the list.
1371
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001372- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1373 functions is now writable.
1374
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001375- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1376 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1377 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1378 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1379
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001380- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1381 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1382 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1383 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1384 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001385
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001386- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1387 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1388
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001389Extension modules
1390-----------------
1391
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001392- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1393
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001394- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1395 data.
1396
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001397- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1398 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1399 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1400 supposed to have been truncated away.
1401
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001402- Added socket.socketpair().
1403
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001404- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1405 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1406
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001407- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001408 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1409
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001410Library
1411-------
1412
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001413- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001414 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001415
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001416- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1417 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1418
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001419- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1420 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1421
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001422- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1423
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001424- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1425 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001426
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001427- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1428 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1429
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001430- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1431
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001432- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1433
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001434- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1435
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001436- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1437 Percivall.
1438
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001439- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1440 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1441
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001442- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1443 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1444 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001445 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001446
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001447- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1448 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1449 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1450 and exponent.
1451
1452- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1453
1454- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001455 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001456 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1457
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001458- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1459 to the readline module.
1460
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001461- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001462 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1463 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001464
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001465- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1466 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1467 contains symlinks.
1468
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001469- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1470 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1471
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001472- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1473 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1474 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1475
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001476- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1477 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1478 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1479 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1480 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1481 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1482 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1483 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1484 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1485 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1486 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1487 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1488 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1489
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001490- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1491
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001492Tools/Demos
1493-----------
1494
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001495- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1496 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1497
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001498- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1499
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001500Build
1501-----
1502
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001503- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1504 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1505 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1506 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1507 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1508 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1509 plans to do so.
1510
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001511- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1512 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1513
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001514- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1515 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1516
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001517- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1518 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1519
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001520- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1521 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1522
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001523- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1524 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1525
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001526C API
1527-----
1528
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001529..
1530
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001531Documentation
1532-------------
1533
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001534- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1535 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1536
1537- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1538 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1539 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001540
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001541New platforms
1542-------------
1543
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001544- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1545
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001546Tests
1547-----
1548
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001549..
1550
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001551Windows
1552-------
1553
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001554- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1555 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1556 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1557 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1558 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1559 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1560 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1561 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1562 the problem.
1563
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001564Mac
1565---
1566
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001567..
1568
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001569
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001570What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1571=================================
1572
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001573*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001574
1575Core and builtins
1576-----------------
1577
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001578- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1579 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1580 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1581 sensitive code.
1582
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001583- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001584 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001585
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001586 @staticmethod
1587 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001588
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001589 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001590
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001591- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1592 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1593 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1594 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1595 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1596 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1597 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1598 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1599 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1600 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1601 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1602
1603 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1604 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1605 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1606 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1607 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1608 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1609 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1610
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001611- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1612 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1613
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001614- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001615 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001616
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001617- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001618 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001619 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1620
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001621- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001622 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1623 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1624
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001625- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1626 types that support garbage collection.
1627
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001628- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1629
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001630- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1631 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1632 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1633 Jython.
1634
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001635- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1636
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001637- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1638 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1639
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001640- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1641 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1642 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001643
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001644- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1645 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1646 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1647
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001648Extension modules
1649-----------------
1650
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001651- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1652
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001653Library
1654-------
1655
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001656- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1657 TIS-620
1658
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001659- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1660 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1661 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1662 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1663 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1664 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1665 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1666 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1667 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1668 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1669
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001670- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1671
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001672- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1673 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1674 same as when the argument is omitted).
1675 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1676
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001677- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1678
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001679- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1680 schemes are offered.
1681
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001682- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1683
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001684- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1685 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1686 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1687
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001688- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1689
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001690- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1691 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1692
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001693- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1694 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1695 when dummy_threading is being used.
1696
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001697- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1698 from a tarfile.
1699
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001700- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001701 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001702
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001703- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1704 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1705 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1706 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1707
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001708- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1709 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1710
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001711- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1712 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1713 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1714 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1715 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1716 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1717 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1718 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1719 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1720 by some other method in progress).
1721
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001722- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1723 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1724 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001725
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001726- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1727
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001728- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1729 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1730 AM Kuchling.
1731
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001732- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1733 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1734 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1735
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001736- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1737 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1738 instead of unsigned.
1739
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001740- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001741 no longer part of the public API.
1742
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001743- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1744 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1745 string methods of the same name).
1746
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001747- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001748 SF patch 945642.
1749
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001750- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1751
1752 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1753
1754 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1755 DocTestSuites.
1756
1757- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1758 that provide thread-local data.
1759
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001760- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1761 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1762
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001763- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1764
1765- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1766 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1767 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1768
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001769- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1770
1771 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1772 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1773 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001774
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001775 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1776 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1777 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1778 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1779
1780 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1781 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1782
1783 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1784 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1785 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1786 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1787
1788 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1789 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1790 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1791 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1792 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1793
1794 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1795 wrapping help output.
1796
1797 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1798 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1799 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001800
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001801C API
1802-----
1803
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001804- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1805 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1806 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1807 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1808 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1809 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1810 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1811 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1812 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1813 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1814 its visible semantics have not changed.
1815
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001816- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1817 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1818
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001819Documentation
1820-------------
1821
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001822- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001823
1824 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001825 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001826
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001827 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001828
1829 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1830
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001831- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001832
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001833Tests
1834-----
1835
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001836- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001837 platforms that use the Makefile.
1838
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001839- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1840 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1841 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1842
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001843
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001844What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1845=================================
1846
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001847*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001848
1849Core and builtins
1850-----------------
1851
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001852- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1853 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1854 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1855 objects now (one object instead of three).
1856
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001857- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1858 Windows DLLs.
1859
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001860- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1861 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001862
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001863- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1864 a new .pyc magic.
1865
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001866- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1867 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1868 be there.
1869
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001870- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1871 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1872 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1873
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001874- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1875 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1876 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1877
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001878- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1879
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001880- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1881 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1882 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001883
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001884- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1885 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1886
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001887- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1888
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001889- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001890 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001891
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001892- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1893
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001894- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1895
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001896- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1897 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1898
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001899- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1900 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1901 Fixes bug #858016 .
1902
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001903- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1904 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1905 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1906
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001907- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1908 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1909 improves their performance (about 35%).
1910
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001911- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1912 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1913 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1914
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001915- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1916 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1917 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1918 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1919
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001920- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1921 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001922 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001923 length is not known).
1924
1925- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1926 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001927 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1928 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001929 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1930
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001931- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1932 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1933
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001934- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1935 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1936 keyword arguments.
1937
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001938- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1939 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1940 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1941
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001942- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1943 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1944 cases.
1945
1946- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1947 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1948 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1949 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1950 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1951 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1952 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1953 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1954 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1955 a release build.
1956
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001957- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1958 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1959
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001960- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001961 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001962
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001963- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1964 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1965 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1966 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1967 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1968 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1969 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1970 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1971 destroyed.
1972
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001973- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1974 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1975 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1976 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1977 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1978 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1979 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1980 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1981
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001982- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1983 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1984 character other than a space.
1985
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001986- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1987 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1988 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1989 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1990 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1991 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1992 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1993 attributes with the same name.
1994
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001995- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1996 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1997 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1998 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1999 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
2000 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
2001 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
2002 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
2003 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
2004 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
2005 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
2006 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
2007 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
2008 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00002009
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00002010- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
2011 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
2012 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
2013 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
2014 This has been repaired.
2015
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00002016- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
2017
2018- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
2019
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00002020- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
2021 over a sequence.
2022
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00002023- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002024 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00002025
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00002026- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
2027
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00002028- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
2029 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
2030 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
2031 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
2032 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
2033 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
2034 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
2035 records with equal keys is unchanged).
2036
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00002037- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
2038 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
2039 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
2040
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00002041- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
2042 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
2043 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
2044 freelist.
2045
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00002046- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
2047 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
2048
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00002049- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
2050 number.
2051
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00002052- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
2053 a TypeError exception.
2054
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00002055- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
2056 820195.
2057
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00002058- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
2059 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
2060 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
2061
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002062- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00002063 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
2064 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00002065
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00002066- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
2067 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
2068 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
2069
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002070- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
2071 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002072 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002073
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002074- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00002075 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
2076 the first call.
2077
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002078
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002079Extension modules
2080-----------------
2081
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00002082- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
2083 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
2084
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002085- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
2086 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
2087 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
2088 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
2089 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
2090 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
2091 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00002092
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00002093- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
2094
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00002095- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
2096
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00002097- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
2098 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
2099
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00002100- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
2101 fewer false positives.
2102
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00002103- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
2104 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
2105
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002106- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00002107 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
2108
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00002109- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002110 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00002111 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00002112 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
2113 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00002114
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00002115- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
2116 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
2117 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
2118 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
2119
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00002120- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
2121 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
2122 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
2123 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
2124 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
2125 #897625.
2126
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00002127- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
2128 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
2129
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00002130- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
2131 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
2132 and pops on either side of the deque.
2133
2134- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
2135 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
2136
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00002137- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
2138 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
2139 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
2140 other functions that expect a function argument.
2141
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00002142- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
2143
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002144- os.getsid was added.
2145
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00002146- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
2147 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
2148 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
2149
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00002150- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
2151
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00002152- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
2153
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00002154- readline.clear_history was added.
2155
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00002156- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
2157
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00002158- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
2159
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00002160- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
2161
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00002162- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
2163
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00002164- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
2165
2166- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
2167
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00002168- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
2169
2170- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
2171
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002172- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
2173 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
2174 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
2175
2176- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
2177 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
2178 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
2179 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
2180 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
2181 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
2182 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
2183
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00002184- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
2185 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
2186 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
2187 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002188
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002189- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002190 iterators from a single iterable.
2191
2192- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
2193 of raising a TypeError exception.
2194
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00002195- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2196 as parameter.
2197
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002198Library
2199-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002200
Armin Rigoa871ef22006-02-08 12:53:56 +00002201- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
2202 profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
2203 profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
2204 Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
2205
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002206- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2207
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002208- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2209 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2210 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002211
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002212- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2213 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2214 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002215
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002216- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002217
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002218- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2219 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002220
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002221- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2222 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2223
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002224- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2225
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002226- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002227 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002228
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002229- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002230 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002231
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002232- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2233
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002234- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2235 on cygwin and mingw32.
2236
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002237- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2238
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002239- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2240 module.
2241
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002242- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2243 installation scheme for all platforms.
2244
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002245- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002246 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002247
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002248- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2249 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2250 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2251
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002252- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2253 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2254 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2255
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002256- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2257
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002258- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2259
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002260- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2261 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2262
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002263- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2264 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2265 type pattern with the same value exists.
2266
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002267- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2268 when run from the command prompt).
2269
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002270- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2271 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2272
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002273- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2274 default sort).
2275
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002276- Added global runctx function to profile module
2277
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002278- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2279
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002280- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2281
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002282- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2283
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002284- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002285 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2286 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2287 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2288 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2289 accordingly.
2290
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002291- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2292 decoding standards.
2293
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002294- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2295 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2296 called for all requests.
2297
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002298- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2299 they are passed to the compiler.
2300
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002301- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2302 indent, width and depth.
2303
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002304- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2305 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2306
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002307- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2308 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2309
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002310- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2311
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002312- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2313
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002314- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2315
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002316- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2317 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2318
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002319- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002320 for better performance.
2321
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002322- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002323
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002324- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2325 a string).
2326
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002327- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2328
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002329- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2330
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002331- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2332
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002333- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2334
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002335- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2336 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2337 list of fieldnames.
2338
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002339- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2340 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2341
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002342- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2343
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002344- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2345 empty lists.
2346
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002347- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2348 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2349 and shelves.
2350
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002351- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2352 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2353
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002354- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002355 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2356 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002357
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002358- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2359 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002360 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002361
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002362- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002363 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2364 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2365
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002366- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2367 and removed in Py2.4.
2368
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002369- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2370
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002371- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2372
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002373Tools/Demos
2374-----------
2375
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002376- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2377 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2378
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002379- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2380
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002381- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2382 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2383 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2384 destination in situations where both files are given.
2385
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002386- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2387 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2388 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2389 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2390
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002391- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2392
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002393- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2394 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2395 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2396 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2397 now.
2398
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002399- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2400 in effect
2401
2402- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2403 C-c C-h
2404
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002405- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2406 -d option was given.
2407
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002408Build
2409-----
2410
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002411- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2412 build under OS X.
2413
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002414- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2415 --enable-profiling.
2416
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002417- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2418 is configured --with-tsc.
2419
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002420- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2421 on AMD64.
2422
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002423- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2424 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2425
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002426- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2427 removed.
2428
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002429- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2430 supported (see PEP 11).
2431
2432- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2433
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002434- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2435
2436- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2437 (see PEP 11).
2438
2439- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2440 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2441
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002442C API
2443-----
2444
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002445- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2446 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2447 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2448
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002449- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2450 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2451 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2452 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2453
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002454- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2455 generator objects.
2456
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002457- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2458 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002459 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2460 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002461
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002462- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2463 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2464
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002465- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2466 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2467 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2468 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2469 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2470
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002471- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2472 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2473 about 10% faster.
2474
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002475- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2476 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2477
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002478- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2479 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2480 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2481 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2482
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002483Windows
2484-------
2485
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002486- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2487 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2488 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2489 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2490
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002491- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2492 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2493 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2494
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002495
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002496What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2497===============================
2498
2499*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2500
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002501IDLE
2502----
2503
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002504- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2505 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2506 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2507 context-menu actions.
2508
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002509- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2510 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2511 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2512 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2513 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2514 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2515 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2516 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2517 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2518
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002519
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002520What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2521=============================================
2522
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002523*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002524
2525Core and builtins
2526-----------------
2527
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002528- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002529 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002530 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2531
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002532Extension modules
2533-----------------
2534
2535- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2536 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2537 than once. This has been fixed.
2538
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002539- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2540 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2541 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2542 call.
2543
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002544- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2545
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002546Library
2547-------
2548
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002549- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2550 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2551
2552- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2553 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2554 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2555 restored.
2556
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002557IDLE
2558----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002559
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002560- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002561
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002562Build
2563-----
2564
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002565- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2566 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2567
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002568C API
2569-----
2570
2571Windows
2572-------
2573
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002574- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2575 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2576
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002577- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2578
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002579Mac
2580---
2581
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002582- Various fixes to pimp.
2583
2584- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2585
2586- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2587 more problems than it solves.
2588
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002589
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002590What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2591=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002592
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002593*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2594
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002595Core and builtins
2596-----------------
2597
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002598- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2599 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2600
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002601- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2602 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002603 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002604
2605- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2606 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2607 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002608 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002609
2610- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2611 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002612
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002613- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2614 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2615 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2616
2617- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002618 770247.
2619
2620- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002621
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002622Extension modules
2623-----------------
2624
2625- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2626 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2627
2628- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2629
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002630- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2631
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002632- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2633 contained within the _strptime module.
2634
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002635- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2636 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2637
2638- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002639 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2640
2641- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2642 the find_class attribute, if present.
2643
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002644- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002645
2646 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2647 (SF bug 763298).
2648
2649 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002650 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2651 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2652 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002653
2654 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2655
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002656Library
2657-------
2658
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002659- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2660
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002661- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2662 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2663 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2664 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2665 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2666 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2667 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2668 or Tester().
2669
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002670- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2671 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2672 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2673 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2674 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2675 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2676 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2677 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2678 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002679
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002680 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002681
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002682- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2683 weren't before was an oversight.
2684
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002685- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2686 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2687
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002688- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2689 when there are no lines.
2690
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002691- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2692 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2693
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002694- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2695 to child processes.
2696
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002697- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2698
2699- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2700
2701- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2702 xmlrpclib.
2703
2704- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2705 responses.
2706
2707- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2708 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2709
2710- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2711 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2712 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2713
2714- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2715 used as patterns.
2716
2717- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2718 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2719 than Tk 8.3.
2720
2721- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2722
2723- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002724
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002725Tools/Demos
2726-----------
2727
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002728- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2729
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002730- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2731
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002732- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002733
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002734Build
2735-----
2736
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002737- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2738
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002739- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2740
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002741- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2742 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002743
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002744- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2745 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2746 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002747
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002748C API
2749-----
2750
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002751- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2752 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2753
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002754Windows
2755-------
2756
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002757- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2758 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2759 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2760 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2761 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2762 Python exception ::
2763
2764 thread.error: can't start new thread
2765
2766 is raised now.
2767
2768- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2769 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2770 instead of from DLL teardown.
2771
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002772Mac
2773---
2774
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002775- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002776 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002777 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2778 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2779 the executable in the bundle.
2780
2781- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002782
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002783- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2784
2785- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2786 on Panther.
2787
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002788What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2789================================
2790
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002791*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002792
2793Core and builtins
2794-----------------
2795
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002796- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2797 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2798 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2799 with the -i option.
2800
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002801- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2802 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2803
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002804- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2805 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2806
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002807- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2808 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2809 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2810 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2811 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2812 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2813 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2814 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2815 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2816 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2817 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2818 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2819 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002820
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002821- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2822 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2823 embedded in a lambda expression.
2824
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002825- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2826 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2827 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2828 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2829 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2830
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002831- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2832 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2833 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2834
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002835- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2836 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2837
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002838- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2839 It's writable again.
2840
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002841- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2842 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2843 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002844 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002845
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002846- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2847 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2848 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2849
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002850Extension modules
2851-----------------
2852
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002853- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2854 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2855
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002856- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2857 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2858 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2859 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2860
2861- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2862 collection.
2863
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002864- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2865 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2866 unique within a single program run.
2867
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002868- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2869 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2870
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002871- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2872 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2873
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002874- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2875 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002876
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002877- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2878
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002879- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2880 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2881
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002882- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2883 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2884 for many BSD-derived systems.
2885
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002886
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002887Library
2888-------
2889
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002890- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2891 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2892 primary ones:
2893
2894 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2895 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2896 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2897
2898 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2899 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2900 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2901 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2902 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2903 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2904
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002905- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2906 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2907 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2908 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2909 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2910 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2911 argument.
2912
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002913- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2914 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2915 in the archive.
2916
2917- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2918 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2919
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002920- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2921 569574).
2922
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002923- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2924 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2925 no more.
2926
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002927- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2928 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2929 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2930 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2931 code coverage.
2932
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002933- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2934 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2935 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002936 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2937 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002938
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002939- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2940 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2941 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002942 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002943
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002944- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2945
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002946- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2947 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2948 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2949 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2950
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002951- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2952 handling.
2953
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002954- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2955 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2956
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002957- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2958 in socket.py.
2959
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002960- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2961
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002962- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2963 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2964 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2965 opener with proxy support.
2966
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002967- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2968
2969- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2970
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002971Tools/Demos
2972-----------
2973
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002974- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2975
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002976- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2977
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002978- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2979 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002980
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002981- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2982 files.
2983
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002984Build
2985-----
2986
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002987- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002988 different root directory.
2989
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002990C API
2991-----
2992
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002993- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2994 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2995 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2996 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2997 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2998 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2999 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
3000 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
3001 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
3002 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
3003
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00003004- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
3005 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
3006 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
3007 from Python.
3008
3009
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00003010New platforms
3011-------------
3012
3013None this time.
3014
3015Tests
3016-----
3017
3018- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
3019 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
3020
3021Windows
3022-------
3023
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00003024- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
3025
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00003026- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
3027 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
3028 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
3029 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
3030 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
3031 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
3032 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
3033 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
3034 that's what it's for.
3035
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00003036Mac
3037---
3038
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00003039- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
3040 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
3041 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
3042 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00003043- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
3044 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
3045- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00003046
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00003047SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
3048------------------------------------
3049
3050430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
3051598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
3052622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
3053661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
3054683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
3055697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
3056713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
3057724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
3058727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
3059729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
3060730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
3061731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
3062732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
3063733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
3064735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
3065740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
3066744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
3067745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
3068747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
3069749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
3070751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
3071753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
3072755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
3073757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
3074760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
3075
3076
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003077What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
3078================================
3079
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00003080*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003081
3082Core and builtins
3083-----------------
3084
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00003085- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
3086 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
3087
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00003088- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
3089 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
3090 and cannot be strings).
3091
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00003092- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
3093 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
3094 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
3095 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
3096
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00003097- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
3098 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
3099 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
3100 Python itself.
3101
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00003102- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
3103 the referenced object, if it has one.
3104
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00003105- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
3106 the thread started at
3107 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
3108
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00003109- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
3110 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
3111 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
3112 placed on a list index.
3113
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00003114- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
3115 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
3116 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
3117 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
3118
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003119- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
3120 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
3121 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
3122 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
3123 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
3124 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
3125 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
3126
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00003127- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
3128 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
3129 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
3130 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
3131 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
3132
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00003133- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
3134 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00003135
3136- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
3137 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
3138 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
3139 #693195.)
3140
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00003141- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
3142 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003143
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003144- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00003145 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003146 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
3147 interpreter executions, would fail.
3148
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003149- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00003150 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00003151 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003152
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003153Extension modules
3154-----------------
3155
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00003156- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
3157 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
3158 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
3159 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
3160
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00003161- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
3162 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
3163
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00003164- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
3165 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
3166 and Greg Chapman.)
3167
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003168- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
3169 recursively.
3170
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00003171- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00003172 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
3173 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
3174 leaks.
3175
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00003176- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
3177
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00003178- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
3179 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
3180 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
3181 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
3182 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
3183 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
3184 #705836.
3185
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00003186- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00003187 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
3188
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00003189- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
3190 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
3191 See SF bug #692416.
3192
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00003193- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
3194 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
3195
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00003196- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
3197 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
3198 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003199
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003200- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003201 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3202 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3203
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003204- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3205 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3206 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3207 timeouts to work properly.
3208
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003209Library
3210-------
3211
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003212- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3213 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3214 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3215 future release.
3216
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003217- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3218 for querying platform dependent features.
3219
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003220- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003221
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003222- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3223 pickle protocol versions.
3224
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003225- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3226 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3227 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3228
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003229- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3230
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003231- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3232 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3233 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3234 modules.
3235
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003236- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3237 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3238 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3239
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003240- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3241 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3242
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003243- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3244 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3245 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3246
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003247- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003248 MS Office extensions.
3249
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003250- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3251 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3252
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003253- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3254 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3255
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003256- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3257 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3258 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3259 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3260 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3261 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3262
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003263- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3264 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3265 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003266
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003267- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3268 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3269 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3270
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003271- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3272
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003273- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3274 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3275 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3276
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003277Tools/Demos
3278-----------
3279
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003280- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3281 See the module docstring for details.
3282
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003283Build
3284-----
3285
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003286- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3287 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003288
3289C API
3290-----
3291
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003292- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3293
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003294- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3295 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3296 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3297
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003298- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3299 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003300
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003301 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3302 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3303 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003304
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003305- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003306 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3307
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003308- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3309 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3310 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003311
3312New platforms
3313-------------
3314
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003315None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003316
3317Tests
3318-----
3319
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003320- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3321 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003322
3323Windows
3324-------
3325
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003326- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3327 function.
3328
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003329- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3330 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003331
3332Mac
3333---
3334
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003335- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3336 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003337
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003338- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3339 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003340
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003341- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3342 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3343 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003344
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003345- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003346 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3347 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003348
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003349- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3350 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003351
3352
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003353What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3354=================================
3355
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003356*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003357
3358Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003359-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003360
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003361- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3362 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3363 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3364
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003365- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3366 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3367 (SF patch #664376.)
3368
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003369- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3370 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3371 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3372 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3373 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3374 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003375 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003376
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003377- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3378 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3379 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3380 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003381 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003382
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003383- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3384 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3385 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3386 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3387 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3388 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3389 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3390 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3391 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3392 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3393 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3394
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003395- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3396 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3397 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3398 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3399 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3400 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3401
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003402- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3403 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3404
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003405- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3406 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3407 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3408 case.)
3409
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003410- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3411 passed as unicode strings.
3412
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003413- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3414 See SF bug #683467.
3415
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003416- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3417 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3418
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003419- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3420
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003421- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3422
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003423- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3424 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3425 arguments.
3426
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003427- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3428 See SF bug #667147.
3429
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003430- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003431 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003432 See SF bug #676155.
3433
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003434- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003435 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003436 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3437 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3438 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3439 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3440 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3441 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003442
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003443Extension modules
3444-----------------
3445
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003446- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3447 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3448 tp_as_number pointer.
3449
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003450- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3451 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3452 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3453 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3454 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3455
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003456- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3457
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003458- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3459
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003460- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003461 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003462 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3463 patch #678531.)
3464
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003465- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3466 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3467
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003468- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3469 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3470
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003471- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3472
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003473- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3474 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3475 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3476
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003477- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3478
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003479- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3480 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3481
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003482- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003483
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003484- datetime changes:
3485
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003486 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3487
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003488 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3489 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3490 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3491 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3492 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3493 now.
3494
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003495 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003496 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3497 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003498
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003499 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003500 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003501 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3502 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3503 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3504 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003505
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003506 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3507 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3508 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003509 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3510
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003511 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3512 by a later example coded by Guido.
3513
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003514 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003515 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3516 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3517 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003518 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3519 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3520
3521 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3522 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3523 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3524 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3525 tzinfo subclass instance.
3526
3527 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3528 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3529 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3530 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3531 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3532 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3533 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3534 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003535
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003536 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3537 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3538 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3539 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3540 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003541 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3542
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003543 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003544
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003545 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3546 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3547 as a naive datetime object.
3548
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003549 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3550 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3551 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3552
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003553 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3554 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3555 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3556 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3557 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3558 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3559 comparison.
3560
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003561 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3562 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3563 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3564 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003565 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003566
3567 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003568
3569 and ::
3570
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003571 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3572
3573 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3574 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3575 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3576 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3577
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003578 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3579 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3580 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3581 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3582 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3583
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003584 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3585 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003586 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3587 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003588
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003589Library
3590-------
3591
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003592- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3593 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3594
3595- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3596 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3597 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3598 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3599 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3600 See PEP 307 for details.
3601
3602- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3603 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3604
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003605- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3606 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003607 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003608 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3609 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003610 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003611
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003612- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3613 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3614
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003615- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3616 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3617 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3618
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003619- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3620
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003621- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3622 exception.
3623
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003624- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3625 class.
3626
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003627- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3628 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3629 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3630
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003631- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3632 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3633
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003634- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003635 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3636 See SF bug #659228.
3637
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003638- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3639 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3640 See SF patch #651082.
3641
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003642- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003643
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003644- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3645 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3646
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003647- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003648 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003649
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003650- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3651 DOS paths from other platforms.
3652
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003653Tools/Demos
3654-----------
3655
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003656- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3657 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3658 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3659 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3660 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3661 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3662 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3663 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3664 example:
3665
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003666 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3667 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003668
3669 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3670
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003671
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003672Build
3673-----
3674
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003675- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3676 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3677 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003678 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3679
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003680 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3681
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003682- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3683 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3684 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3685 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3686 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3687 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3688 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3689 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3690 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3691
3692- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3693 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3694 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3695 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3696
3697- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3698 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3699
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003700C API
3701-----
3702
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003703- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3704 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003705
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003706- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3707 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3708 tp_as_number pointer.
3709
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003710- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3711 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3712 (SF #681367)
3713
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003714- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3715 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3716 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3717 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003718
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003719Tests
3720-----
3721
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003722- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003723 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3724 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3725 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3726 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3727 pydoc.)
3728
3729- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3730
3731- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003732
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003733Windows
3734-------
3735
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003736- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3737 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3738 time).
3739
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003740- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3741 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3742
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003743- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3744 release without strong cryptography.
3745
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003746- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003747 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003748
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003749- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3750 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3751
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003752Mac
3753---
3754
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003755- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3756 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003757
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003758- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3759 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3760 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003761
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003762- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3763 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003764
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003765- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3766 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3767 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3768 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003769
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003770- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003771 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3772 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3773 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003774
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003775
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003776What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003777=================================
3778
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003779*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003780
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003781Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003782--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003783
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003784- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3785
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003786- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3787 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003788 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003789 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003790 a different meaning than before.
3791
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003792- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003793 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003794 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003795
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003796- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003797 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003798 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003799
3800- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3801 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3802 and deallocation.
3803
3804- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3805 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3806
3807- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3808 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3809 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3810 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3811 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3812
3813- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3814 now detected by the garbage collector.
3815
3816- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3817 [SF bug 519621]
3818
3819- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3820 identifier.
3821
3822- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3823 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3824 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3825 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3826 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3827 [SF bug 563060]
3828
3829- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3830 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3831 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3832 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3833 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3834
3835- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3836 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3837 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3838
3839- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3840
3841- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3842 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3843 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3844 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3845 state of the slots would be lost.)
3846
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003847Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003848-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003849
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003850- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003851 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3852 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3853 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3854 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003855 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3856 Jython 2.1.
3857
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003858- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003859 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003860 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3861 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3862 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3863 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3864 these, see PEP 302.
3865
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003866- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3867 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3868 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3869
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003870- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3871 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3872 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3873
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003874- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3875 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3876 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3877
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003878- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3879 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3880 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3881 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3882 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3883 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3884 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3885 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3886 releases or implementations.
3887
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003888- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003889 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3890 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003891
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003892- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3893 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3894
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003895- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3896 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3897 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3898
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003899- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3900 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3901
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003902- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3903 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003904 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3905 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003906
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003907- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3908 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3909 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3910 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3911 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3912
3913 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3914 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3915 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3916 pattern.
3917
3918 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3919 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3920 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3921 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3922
3923 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3924 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3925 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3926 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3927 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3928 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3929
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003930- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3931 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3932 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3933 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3934 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3935 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3936 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3937 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003938
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003939- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3940 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3941 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3942 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3943 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003944 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3945 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3946 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3947 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3948 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3949 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3950 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003951
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003952- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3953 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3954
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003955- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3956 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3957 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3958 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3959 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3960 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3961 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3962 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3963 to Zack Weinberg!
3964
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003965- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3966 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3967 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3968 type. This has been fixed now.
3969
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003970- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3971 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3972 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3973
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003974- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3975 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3976 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3977 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3978 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3979 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3980 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3981 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003982 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003983
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003984- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3985 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3986 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003987
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003988- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3989 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3990 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3991 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3992 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3993 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3994 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3995 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003996 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003997 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3998 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3999
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00004000- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
4001 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
4002 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
4003 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
4004 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
4005 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
4006 this.)
4007
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00004008- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
4009 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004010 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00004011 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00004012 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
4013 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00004014 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
4015 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00004016
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00004017- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
4018 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
4019 currently running.
4020
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00004021- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
4022 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
4023 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
4024 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
4025
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00004026- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
4027 as directory names.
4028
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00004029- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
4030 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
4031
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00004032- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
4033 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
4034
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00004035- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00004036 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
4037 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00004038
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00004039- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
4040 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
4041 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
4042 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
4043 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
4044
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004045- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
4046 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
4047 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
4048 removed.
4049
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00004050- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
4051 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
4052 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
4053
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00004054- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
4055 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
4056 to __debug__.
4057
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00004058- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
4059 string to the left with zeros. For example,
4060 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
4061
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00004062- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
4063 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
4064 deprecated now.
4065
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00004066- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
4067 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
4068 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00004069
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00004070- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
4071 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
4072 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
4073 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
4074 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00004075
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00004076- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
4077 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
4078
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00004079- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
4080 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
4081 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004082 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00004083 is backward compatible.
4084
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00004085- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
4086 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
4087 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
4088 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
4089 could access a pointer to freed memory.
4090
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00004091- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
4092 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
4093 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
4094 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
4095 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
4096 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004097
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00004098- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
4099 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
4100
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004101- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
4102 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
4103
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004104- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
4105 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
4106 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
4107 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
4108 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
4109
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00004110- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
4111 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
4112 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
4113
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004114- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00004115 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
4116
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00004117- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
4118 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
4119 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00004120
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00004121- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
4122 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
4123
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00004124- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
4125 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
4126 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
4127
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00004128- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
4129
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004130Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004131-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004132
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00004133- Added three operators to the operator module:
4134 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
4135 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
4136 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
4137
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00004138- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
4139
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00004140- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
4141 archives.
4142
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004143- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
4144 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
4145 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
4146
4147 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
4148
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004149- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
4150 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
4151 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00004152 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004153
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00004154- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
4155 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
4156 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
4157 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00004158 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
4159 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
4160 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
4161 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00004162
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00004163- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
4164 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00004165
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00004166- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
4167
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00004168- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
4169 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
4170
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00004171- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
4172 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
4173 supported.
4174
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00004175- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
4176
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00004177- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
4178 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00004179
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00004180- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
4181 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
4182
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00004183- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
4184
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004185- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
4186 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
4187
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00004188- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
4189 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
4190 functions but callable type objects.
4191
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004192- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004193 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004194 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004195
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00004196- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
4197 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00004198
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00004199- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
4200 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004201
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004202- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4203 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4204 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4205 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4206
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004207- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4208 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004209
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004210- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4211 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4212 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4213 and __imul__.
4214
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004215- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004216 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4217 is called.
4218
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004219- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4220 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4221 interpreter was compiled.
4222
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004223- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4224 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4225 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004226 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004227 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4228 1, not 2.
4229
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004230- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4231 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4232 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4233 limit.
4234
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004235- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4236 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4237 bug #623464.
4238
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004239- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4240 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4241 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4242 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4243
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004244Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004245-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004246
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004247- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4248
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004249- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4250 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4251 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4252 with Python 2.3a2.
4253
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004254- os.path exposes getctime.
4255
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004256- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004257 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004258 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004259 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004260 unit tests of floating point results.
4261
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004262- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4263 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4264 has been increased.
4265
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004266- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4267 executed.
4268
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004269- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4270 postinstallation script.
4271
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004272- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4273 test the current module.
4274
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004275- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004276 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4277 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4278 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4279 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4280
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004281- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004282 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004283 Ward's Optik package.
4284
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004285- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4286 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4287 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4288 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4289
4290- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4291 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004292 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004293
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004294- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4295 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4296 shelf are binary pickles.
4297
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004298- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4299 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4300
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004301- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4302 modules are iterators now.
4303
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004304- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4305 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4306 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4307 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4308 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4309 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004310
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004311- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4312 with their entity value.
4313
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004314- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4315
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004316- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4317 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004318
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004319- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4320 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004321 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004322
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004323- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4324 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4325 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4326 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4327 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4328 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4329 main():
4330
4331 import locale
4332 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4333
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004334- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4335 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4336
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004337- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4338 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4339 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4340 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4341 to the new standard.
4342
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004343- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4344 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4345 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4346 an extension to the database.
4347
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004348- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4349 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4350 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4351 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004352 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004353
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004354- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004355 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004356
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004357- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4358 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4359 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4360 bounded integers.
4361
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004362- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4363 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4364 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4365 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4366 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4367 in existence.
4368
4369 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4370 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4371 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4372 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4373 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4374 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4375
4376 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4377 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4378 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4379 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4380
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004381- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4382 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4383 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4384
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004385- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4386
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004387- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4388 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4389 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4390 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4391
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004392- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4393 argument.
4394
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004395- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4396 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4397 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4398 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4399 [SF patch 560794].
4400
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004401- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4402 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4403 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004404 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4405 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4406 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004407
4408- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4409 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004410
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004411- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4412 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4413 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4414 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004415
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004416- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4417 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4418 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4419 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4420 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4421
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004422- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004423
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004424- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4425
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004426- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4427 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4428 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4429 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4430 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4431 identical to None.
4432
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004433- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4434 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4435 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4436 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4437 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4438 results now.
4439
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004440- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4441 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4442
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004443- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4444 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4445 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4446 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4447 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4448 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4449 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4450 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4451
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004452- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4453
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004454- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4455 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4456
4457- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4458 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4459 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4460 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4461 and other systems.
4462
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004463- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4464 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4465 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4466 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 +00004467 work well with these.
4468
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004469- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4470
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004471- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004472 connections.
4473
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004474- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4475 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4476 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4477
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004478- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4479 sets
4480
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004481- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4482 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4483 name.
4484
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004485- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4486 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4487 passed in.
4488
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004489- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004490 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004491 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4492 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004493
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004494- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4495
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004496- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4497
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004498- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4499 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4500 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4501
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004502- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4503 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4504 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4505 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004506 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004507
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004508- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004509 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004510 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004511
4512- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4513 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4514 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4515
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004516- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004517 the value of its expression argument.
4518
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004519- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4520 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4521 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4522
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004523- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4524 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4525 skipstone browser was included.
4526
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004527- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4528 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4529
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004530Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004531-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004532
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004533- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4534 names in addition to accepting file names.
4535
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004536- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4537 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4538 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4539 still used and useful.)
4540
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004541- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4542 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4543 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4544 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004545
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004546- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4547 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4548 the generated binary.
4549
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004550Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004551-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004552
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004553- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4554
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004555- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4556 except in the hands of experts.
4557
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004558- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004559 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4560 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4561 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004562
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004563- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4564 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4565 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4566 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4567 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4568 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4569 builds.
4570
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004571- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4572 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4573 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4574 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4575 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4576 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4577 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4578 new type.
4579
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004580- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004581
4582 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4583 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4584 positive infinities.
4585
4586 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4587 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4588 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4589 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4590 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4591 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4592 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4593
4594 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4595
4596 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4597
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004598- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4599 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4600 size of the executable.
4601
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004602- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4603 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4604 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4605 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004606
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004607- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4608
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004609- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4610 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4611 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004612
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004613- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4614 well as Unix.
4615
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004616- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4617 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4618 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4619 modules in the README file for details.
4620
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004621C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004622-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004623
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004624- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4625 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004626 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004627 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004628 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004629
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004630- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4631 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4632 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4633 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4634 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4635 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004636 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004637 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4638 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4639 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4640 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4641 aligned.)
4642
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004643- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4644 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4645 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4646
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004647- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4648 level.
4649
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004650- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4651 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4652 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4653 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4654 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4655
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004656- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4657 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4658 code.
4659
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004660- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4661 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4662 adjusting for negative indices.
4663
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004664- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4665 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4666 object.
4667
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004668- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4669 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4670 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4671
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004672- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4673 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004674
4675- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4676
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004677- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4678 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4679 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4680 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4681
4682- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4683
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004684- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004685
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004686- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004687 without going through the buffer API.
4688
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004689- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004690
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004691- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4692 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4693 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4694 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4695
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004696- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4697 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4698
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004699- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004700 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4701
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004702New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004703-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004704
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004705- OpenVMS is now supported.
4706
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004707- AtheOS is now supported.
4708
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004709- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4710
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004711- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4712
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004713Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004714-----
4715
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004716- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4717 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4718 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004719
4720Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004721-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004722
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004723- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4724 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4725 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4726 bugs.
4727 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004728 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004729 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4730 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004731 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004732
4733- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004734 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004735
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004736- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4737 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4738
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004739- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4740 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004741 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004742 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4743
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004744- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4745 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4746 use files" uninstall option).
4747
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004748- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4749
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004750- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4751 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4752
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004753- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4754 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4755 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4756
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004757- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4758 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4759 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4760 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4761 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004762 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4763 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4764 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004765
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004766- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004767 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004768 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4769 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4770 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4771 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4772 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4773 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4774 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4775 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4776 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4777 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4778 work around.
4779
4780- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4781 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4782 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4783 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4784 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4785 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4786 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4787 specified with O_CREAT too).
4788
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004789Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004790----
4791
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004792- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004793
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004794- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4795 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4796 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4797
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004798- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4799 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4800 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4801
4802- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4803 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4804 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4805 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4806 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4807 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4808 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4809 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004810
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004811- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4812 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4813 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004814
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004815- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4816 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4817 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4818 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4819 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004820
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004821- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4822 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4823 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004824
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004825- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4826 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004827
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004828- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4829 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4830 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4831 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4832 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004833
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004834- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4835 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4836 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4837
4838- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4839 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4840 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004841
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004842- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4843 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4844 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4845 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004846 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004847
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004848- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4849 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004850
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004851- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4852 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004853
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004854- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004855 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004856 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4857 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004858
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004859
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004860What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004861===============================
4862
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004863*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4864
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004865Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004866--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004867
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004868- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4869 with a custom metaclass.
4870
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004871Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004872-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004873
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004874- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4875 are proxies.
4876
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004877Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004878-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004879
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004880- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4881 very short strings.
4882
4883- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4884 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4885 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4886 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4887 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4888
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004889Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004890-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004891
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004892- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4893 close or delete time).
4894
4895- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4896 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4897
4898- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4899
4900- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004901 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004902
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004903Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004904-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004905
4906Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004907-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004908
4909C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004910-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004911
4912New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004913-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004914
4915Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004916-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004917
4918Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004919-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004920
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004921- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4922
4923- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4924 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4925
4926- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4927 deleted at process exit time.
4928
4929- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4930 in backslash.
4931
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004932Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004933----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004934
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004935- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4936 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4937 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4938
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004939
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004940What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004941===========================
4942
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004943*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4944
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004945Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004946--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004947
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004948- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4949 been extensively updated. See
4950
4951 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4952
4953 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4954
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004955- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4956 deleted!
4957
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004958- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4959 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4960 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4961 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4962 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4963
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004964- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4965
4966 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4967 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4968
4969 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4970 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4971 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4972 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4973 supported anyway.
4974
4975 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4976 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4977
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004978- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4979 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4980 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4981 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4982 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004983
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004984- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4985 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4986 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4987
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004988Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004989-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004990
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004991- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4992 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4993 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4994 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4995 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4996 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004997 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4998 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4999 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
5000 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005001
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00005002- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
5003 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
5004 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
5005
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005006Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005007-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005008
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005009- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
5010
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005011Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005012-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005013
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00005014- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
5015 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
5016 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
5017 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
5018 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
5019 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
5020
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00005021- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
5022
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00005023- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
5024
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00005025- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
5026
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005027- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
5028 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
5029 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
5030
5031- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
5032
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005033Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005034-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005035
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005036- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
5037 off a search on Google.
5038
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005039Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005040-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005041
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005042- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
5043 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
5044 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
5045 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
5046 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
5047 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
5048 other platforms should do likewise.
5049
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00005050- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
5051 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
5052 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
5053
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005054C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005055-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005056
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00005057- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
5058 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
5059 producing key-value pairs.
5060
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00005061- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00005062 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00005063 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
5064 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
5065 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
5066 previously went unchallenged.
5067
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005068New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005069-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005070
5071Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005072-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005073
5074Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005075-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005076
5077Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005078----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005079
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00005080- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
5081 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005082
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005083- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
5084 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
5085 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
5086 home.
5087
5088
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005089What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005090===========================
5091
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005092*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
5093
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005094Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005095--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005096
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00005097- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
5098 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005099
5100 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00005101 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005102
5103 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
5104 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005105 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005106 This needs to be documented.
5107
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00005108- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
5109 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
5110
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00005111- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
5112 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
5113 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
5114
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00005115- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
5116 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
5117
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005118- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
5119 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
5120 class forbids it).
5121
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00005122- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
5123 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
5124 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
5125
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005126- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
5127
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005128Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005129-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005130
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00005131- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
5132 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005133 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00005134
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005135- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
5136 (like 1 + '').
5137
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005138Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005139-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005140
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005141- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
5142 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
5143 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
5144 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005145 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005146 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
5147
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00005148- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
5149 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
5150 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
5151 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
5152
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005153- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
5154 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005155 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
5156 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
5157 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005158
5159- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
5160 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005161
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00005162- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
5163 bytes on its input.
5164
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005165Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005166-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005167
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005168- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00005169 convenience function.
5170
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005171- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
5172 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
5173 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005174 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
5175 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
5176 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
5177 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
5178 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
5179 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005180
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00005181- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
5182 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
5183 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
5184 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
5185
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00005186- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
5187 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
5188 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
5189
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005190- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
5191 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
5192 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
5193 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
5194
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005195- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
5196 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005197 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005198 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
5199 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
5200 new -l and -e options.
5201
5202- statcache is now deprecated.
5203
5204- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5205 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005206 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005207 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5208 time properly taken into account.
5209
5210- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5211 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5212 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5213 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5214
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005215Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005216-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005217
5218Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005219-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005220
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005221- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5222 is built with libdb3 if available.
5223
5224- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5225
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005226C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005227-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005228
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005229- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5230 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5231 PySequence_Size().
5232
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005233- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5234
5235- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5236 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5237 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5238
5239- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5240 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5241
5242- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5243 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5244
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005245New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005246-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005247
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005248- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5249 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5250
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005251- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5252 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5253
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005254- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5255
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005256Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005257-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005258
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005259- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5260 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5261
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005262Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005263-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005264
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005265Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005266----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005267
5268- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5269 removed completely in the next release.
5270
5271- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5272 OSX.
5273
5274- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5275 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5276
5277- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5278
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005279
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005280What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005281===========================
5282
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005283*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5284
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005285Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005286--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005287
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005288- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005289 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005290 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005291 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5292 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005293 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5294 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005295 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5296 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005297
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005298- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5299 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5300
5301- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5302 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5303
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005304Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005305-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005306
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005307- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5308 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5309 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5310 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5311 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5312 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5313 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5314 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5315
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005316- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5317 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5318 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5319 example).
5320
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005321- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005322 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005323 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005324 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005325
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005326- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5327 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5328 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005329 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005330
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005331- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5332 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5333 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5334 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5335 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5336 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5337
5338 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5339
5340 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5341
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005342Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005343-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005344
5345- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5346
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005347- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5348
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005349- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5350 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005351
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005352- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5353 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5354 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5355 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5356 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5357 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005358 attributes.
5359
5360- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5361 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5362 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005363
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005364- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5365 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5366 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005367
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005368- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5369 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5370 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005371 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5372 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5373
5374- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5375 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005376
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005377Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005378-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005379
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005380- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5381 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5382
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005383- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5384 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5385 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5386 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5387
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005388- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5389 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5390 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5391 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5392
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005393 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5394 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5395 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5396 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5397 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5398 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5399 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5400 without losing information).
5401
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005402- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005403 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5404 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5405 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5406 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5407 module).
5408
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005409 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005410 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5411 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5412 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5413 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005414
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005415- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005416 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5417 encoding.
5418
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005419- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5420 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5421
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005422- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005423 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5424
5425- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5426 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5427 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5428 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5429
5430- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5431
5432- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5433 ON, and OFF.
5434
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005435- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5436 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5437
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005438Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005439-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005440
5441- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5442 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5443 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005444
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005445- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5446 been added: -X and -E.
5447
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005448Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005449-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005450
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005451- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5452 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5453
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005454C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005455-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005456
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005457- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5458 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5459 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5460 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5461 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5462
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005463- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5464 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5465 as long) arguments.
5466
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005467- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5468 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5469 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5470 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5471 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5472 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5473
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005474- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5475 input.
5476
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005477New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005478-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005479
5480Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005481-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005482
5483Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005484-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005485
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005486- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5487 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5488 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5489
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005490- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5491 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5492 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005493 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005494
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005495 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5496 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5497 import signal
5498 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005499
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005500 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005501 while 1:
5502 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005503 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005504 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5505 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5506 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5507 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005508
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005509
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005510What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5511===========================
5512
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005513*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5514
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005515Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005516--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005517
5518- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5519 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5520 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5521
5522- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5523 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5524 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5525 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5526 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5527 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5528 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005529
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005530- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005531 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005532 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5533 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5534 associate a docstring with a property.
5535
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005536- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5537 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5538 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5539 other built-in object types.
5540
5541- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5542 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5543 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5544 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5545 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5546
5547- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5548 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5549
5550- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5551 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005552 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005553 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5554 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5555 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5556 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5557 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5558
5559- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5560 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5561 class.
5562
5563- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5564 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5565 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5566 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5567
5568- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5569 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5570 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5571 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5572
5573- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5574 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5575
5576- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5577 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5578 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5579 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5580 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005581 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005582 with the same value as s.
5583
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005584- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5585
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005586Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005587----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005588
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005589- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5590
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005591- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5592 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5593 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5594 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5595 objects.
5596
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005597- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5598 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005599 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5600 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5601
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005602- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5603 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5604 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5605
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005606Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005607-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005608
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005609- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5610 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5611 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5612 by the instances.
5613
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005614- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5615 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5616 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5617
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005618- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5619 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5620 before the entire comparison is complete.
5621
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005622- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5623 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5624 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5625
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005626- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5627 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5628 getwriter().
5629
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005630- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5631 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5632
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005633- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005634 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5635 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5636
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005637- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5638 iterable object.
5639
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005640- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5641 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005642
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005643- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5644 authentication.
5645
5646- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5647 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005648
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005649- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005650 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5651 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5652 a sample driver.)
5653
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005654Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005655-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005656
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005657- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5658 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5659 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5660 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5661 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5662 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5663 kernel has large file support.
5664
5665- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5666 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5667 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5668 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5669 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5670
5671- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5672 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5673 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5674
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005675C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005676-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005677
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005678- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5679 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5680
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005681New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005682-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005683
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005684- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5685 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5686
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005687Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005688-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005689
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005690- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5691 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5692 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5693 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5694 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5695
5696- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5697 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5698 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5699 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5700
5701- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5702 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5703
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005704Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005705-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005706
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005707- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005708 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5709 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005710
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005711
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005712What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5713===========================
5714
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005715*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5716
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005717Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005718----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005719
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005720- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5721 big to represent as a C double.
5722
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005723- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5724 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5725 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5726 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5727 restriction).
5728
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005729- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5730 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5731 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5732 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5733 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5734
5735 >>> dir([])
5736 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5737 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5738 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5739 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5740 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5741 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5742 'reverse', 'sort']
5743
5744 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5745
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005746- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005747 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5748 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5749 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5750 OverflowError exception.
5751
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005752- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005753 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005754 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5755 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5756 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5757 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5758 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005759 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005760 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5761 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5762
5763 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5764 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5765 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5766 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005767
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005768- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005769 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5770 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5771 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5772 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5773 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5774 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5775 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5776 once it is created.
5777
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005778- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5779 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5780 (key, value) pairs.
5781
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005782- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005783 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5784 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5785
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005786- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5787 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5788 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5789 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5790 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005791
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005792- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005793 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5794 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5795
5796 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5797
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005798- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005799 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5800
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005801Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005802-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005803
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005804- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005805 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5806 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005807
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005808- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5809 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5810 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5811 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5812 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5813 in this area anymore).
5814
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005815- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5816 threading.Timer.
5817
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005818- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5819 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5820
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005821- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005822 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5823
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005824- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005825 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5826 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5827 converted to Python longs.
5828
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005829- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005830 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5831
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005832- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5833 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5834 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5835
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005836Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005837-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005838
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005839- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5840 division operators as per PEP 238.
5841
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005842Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005843-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005844
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005845- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5846 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5847 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5848 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5849
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005850C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005851-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005852
5853- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005854
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005855- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5856 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005857 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005858
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005859 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5860 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005861 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005862 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005863
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005864- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005865 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5866 module:
5867
5868 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005869
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005870 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5871 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005872
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005873 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5874 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005875
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005876 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5877
5878 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5879
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005880- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005881 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5882 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5883 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005884
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005885New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005886-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005887
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005888- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5889 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5890 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5891 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5892 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005893
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005894Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005895-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005896
5897Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005898-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005899
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005900- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5901 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5902 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5903 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005904 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5905 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5906 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5907 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5908 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005909
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005910- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005911 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5912
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005913
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005914What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5915===========================
5916
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005917*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5918
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005919Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005920-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005921
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005922- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5923 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5924
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005925- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5926 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5927 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005928
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005929- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5930 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5931 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5932 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005933
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005934- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5935
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005936- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005937
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005938Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005939-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005940
5941- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005942 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005943 the module docstring for details.
5944
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005945Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005946-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005947
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005948- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005949 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5950 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5951 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005952
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005953- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5954 Nick Mathewson.
5955
5956Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005957----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005958
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005959- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5960 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5961 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5962 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5963 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5964 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5965 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5966 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5967
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005968- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5969 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5970 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5971 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5972
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005973- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5974 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5975 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5976 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5977 come a long way).
5978
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005979- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5980 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5981 write filters for these warnings).
5982
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005983- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5984 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5985 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5986 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5987 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5988
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005989- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5990 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5991 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5992 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5993 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5994 older distribution.
5995
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005996Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005997-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005998
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005999- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
6000 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00006001 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00006002
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006003- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
6004 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
6005 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
6006
6007- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
6008
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00006009- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
6010
6011- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
6012
6013- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
6014
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006015- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00006016
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00006017- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
6018
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006019New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006020-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006021
6022C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006023-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006024
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00006025- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
6026 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
6027 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
6028 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
6029 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
6030 against buffer overruns.
6031
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00006032- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00006033 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
6034 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00006035 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
6036 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
6037 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
6038
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00006039- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
6040 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
6041 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
6042 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
6043 deprecated.
6044
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00006045Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006046-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00006047
6048- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
6049 relevant is found.
6050
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00006051
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006052What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006053===========================
6054
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006055*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
6056
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006057Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006058----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006059
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00006060- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
6061 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
6062 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
6063 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
6064 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
6065 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
6066 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
6067 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006068 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00006069 repaired.
6070
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006071- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00006072 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006073 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
6074 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
6075 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
6076 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
6077 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
6078 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
6079 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
6080 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
6081
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00006082- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
6083 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
6084 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
6085 leading BMO character).
6086
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006087- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
6088 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
6089 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
6090
6091 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
6092 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
6093 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006094
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006095 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
6096 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
6097 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
6098 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
6099 for various simple to use conversions.
6100
6101 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
6102 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
6103
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006104 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6105 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
6106 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
6107 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
6108 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6109 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
6110 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6111 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
6112 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6113 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
6114 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6115 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
6116 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6117 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
6118 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006119
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006120- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
6121 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
6122 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006123 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006124 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006125
6126 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006127 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
6128 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
6129 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
6130 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
6131 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006132 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
6133 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006134
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006135 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
6136 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
6137 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006138 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006139
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00006140- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
6141 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
6142 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
6143 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
6144 floating arithmetic,
6145
6146 x = 9007199254740992.0
6147 print long(x)
6148
6149 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
6150 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
6151 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
6152 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
6153 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
6154 functions are of good quality).
6155
6156 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
6157 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
6158 algorithms to break.
6159
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00006160- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
6161 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
6162 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
6163 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
6164 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
6165 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
6166 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
6167 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
6168 order.
6169
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006170- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
6171 operation along the most common code paths.
6172
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006173- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
6174 the same as dict.has_key(x).
6175
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00006176- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
6177 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
6178 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
6179 {}.update(UserDict())
6180
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006181- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
6182 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
6183 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
6184 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
6185 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
6186 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
6187 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
6188 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
6189
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006190- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00006191 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006192
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006193 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00006194 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
6195 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00006196 join() method of strings
6197 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006198 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
6199 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006200 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006201 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006202
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006203- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6204 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6205
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006206- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6207 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6208
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006209- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6210 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6211 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6212 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6213
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006214- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6215 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006216 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006217 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6218 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006219
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006220- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6221
6222
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006223Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006224-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006225
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006226- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006227 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006228 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6229 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6230
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006231- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6232 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6233
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006234- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6235 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6236 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6237 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6238
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006239- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6240 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6241 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6242
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006243- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6244
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006245- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6246
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006247- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6248 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6249 that are still imported into string.py).
6250
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006251- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6252
6253- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6254 Now it does.
6255
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006256- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6257
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006258- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6259 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6260 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6261 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6262 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006263 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6264 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006265
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006266- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6267 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6268 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6269 'help(object)'.
6270
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006271Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006272-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006273
6274- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006275 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006276 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6277 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6278
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006279- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006280 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6281 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006282
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006283C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006284-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006285
6286- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6287 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006288
6289----
6290
6291**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**