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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Martin v. Löwis18e16552006-02-15 17:27:45 +000015- PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type.
16
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000017- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
18 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
19 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
20
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000021- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
22 configure would break checking curses.h.
23
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000024- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
25 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
26
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000027- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
28
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000029- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
30
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000031- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
32
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000033- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
34 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
35
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000036- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
37 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
38 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
39
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000040- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
41 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000042 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000043
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000044- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
45 now encodes backslash correctly.
46
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000047- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
48
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000049- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
50 and long longs.
51
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000052- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
53 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
54 message in this case.
55
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000056- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
57 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
58 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
59 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
60 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
61
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000062- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000063
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000064- Speed up some Unicode operations.
65
66- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
67
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000068- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000069 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
70
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000071- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
72
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000073- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
74 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
75
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000076- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
77
78- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
79
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000080- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
81 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
82 was empty.
83
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000084- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
85 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
86
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000087- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000088 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000089
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000090- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
91 codes.
92
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000093- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
94 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
95 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
96
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000097- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
98 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
99
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +0000100- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +0000101 (fixes bug #1119418).
102
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000103- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
104
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000105- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
106 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
107
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000108- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
109 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
110 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
111
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000112- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
113
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000114- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
115 reference counts in some error exit cases.
116
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000117- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
118 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
119 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
120 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
121 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
122 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
123 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
124 realloc.
125
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000126- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
127 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
128
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000129- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
130 like their int counterparts.
131
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000132- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
133 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
134 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
135 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
136 for a longer write-up of the problem).
137
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000138- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
139 serializing floats.
140
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000141- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
142 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
143 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
144
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000145- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
146 278.
147
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000148- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
149 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
150 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
151 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000152 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000153 PyNumber_*().
154 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
155
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000156- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
157 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
158 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
159 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
160
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000161- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
162 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
163 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
164 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
165 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
166
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000167- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
168 disabled caused a crash.
169
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000170- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
171 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
172
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000173- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000174 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
175
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000176- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
177
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000178- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000179 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
180 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
181 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000182
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000183- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
184
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000185- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
186 returning None.
187
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000188- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000189 ('\') with a specific error message.
190
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000191- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
192
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000193- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
194 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
195
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000196- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000197 an ferror() call.
198
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000199- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
200 list.sort().
201
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000202- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
203 (2+3) --> (5).
204
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000205- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
206
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000207- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
208 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000209
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000210- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
211 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
212 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
213
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000214- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
215 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
216 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
217
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000218Extension Modules
219-----------------
220
Georg Brandlf4f44152006-02-18 22:29:33 +0000221- Patch #1393157: os.startfile() now has an optional argument to specify
222 a "command verb" to invoke on the file.
223
Neal Norwitz082b2df2006-02-07 07:04:46 +0000224- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
225 is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
226
Neal Norwitz0e6bc8c2006-02-05 05:45:43 +0000227- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
228 mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
229 mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
230
Martin v. Löwis57a34e82006-02-04 19:12:37 +0000231- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
232 than the system default domain.
233
Martin v. Löwis14694662006-02-03 12:54:16 +0000234- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
235 are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
236 WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
237
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000238- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
239
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000240- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
241 before the env.
242
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000243- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
244
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000245- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
246
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000247- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
248 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
249 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
250
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000251- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
252 without prior setting of the userptr.
253
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000254- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
255
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000256- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
257
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000258- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
259 problem on AIX.
260
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000261- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
262
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000263- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
264
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000265- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
266
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000267- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
268 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
269
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000270- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
271 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
272
273- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
274
275- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000276
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000277- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
278 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
279
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000280- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
281
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000282- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
283 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
284
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000285- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
286 returns in cStringIO.c.
287
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000288- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
289 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
290
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000291- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
292
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000293- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
294
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000295- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
296 the file system encoding.
297
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000298- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
299 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000300
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000301- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
302
303- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000304 line without newlines.
305
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000306- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
307 on Windows.
308
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000309- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000310 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
311
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000312- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
313 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
314 for large or negative values.
315
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000316- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000317 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000318
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000319- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
320
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000321- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
322 if available on the platform.
323
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000324- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
325 available on the platform.
326
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000327- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
328 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
329
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000330- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
331
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000332- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
333 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
334 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
335
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000336- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
337
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000338- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
339 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
340
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000341- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000342 file size.
343
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000344- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
345
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000346- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
347 {remove_history,replace_history}
348
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000349- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
350 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000351
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000352- stat_float_times is now True.
353
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000354- array.array objects are now picklable.
355
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000356- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
357 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
358
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000359- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
360 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
361 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
362
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000363- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
364 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000365
366Library
367-------
368
Georg Brandlc98eeed2006-02-19 14:57:47 +0000369- Patch #1215184: FileInput now can be given an opening hook which can
370 be used to control how files are opened.
371
Georg Brandlc029f872006-02-19 14:12:34 +0000372- Patch #1212287: fileinput.input() now has a mode parameter for
373 specifying the file mode input files should be opened with.
374
Georg Brandl67e9fb92006-02-19 13:56:17 +0000375- Patch #1215184: fileinput now has a fileno() function for getting the
376 current file number.
377
Georg Brandl602b9ba2006-02-19 13:26:36 +0000378- Patch #1349274: gettext.install() now optionally installs additional
379 translation functions other than _() in the builtin namespace.
380
Georg Brandle4662172006-02-19 09:51:27 +0000381- Patch #1337756: fileinput now accepts Unicode filenames.
382
Georg Brandl7b4e7c22006-02-18 21:10:56 +0000383- Patch #1373643: The chunk module can now read chunks larger than
384 two gigabytes.
385
Georg Brandl21dd1af2006-02-17 13:35:13 +0000386- Patch #1417555: SimpleHTTPServer now returns Last-Modified headers.
387
Georg Brandlbd3bc4d2006-02-17 09:52:53 +0000388- Bug #1430298: It is now possible to send a mail with an empty
389 return address using smtplib.
390
Georg Brandl0e1abe22006-02-17 09:48:14 +0000391- Bug #1432260: The names of lambda functions are now properly displayed
392 in pydoc.
Georg Brandl501dd0d2006-02-17 09:45:40 +0000393
Martin v. Löwis00756902006-02-05 17:09:41 +0000394- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
395 unless the system is Win32.
396
Martin v. Löwisc81e3a62006-01-30 15:04:31 +0000397- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000398 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
399 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
400
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000401- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
402
403- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000404
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000405- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
406
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000407- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000408 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000409
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000410- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
411 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000412
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000413- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
414
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000415- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
416
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000417- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
418 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
419 LoadError subclasses IOError.
420
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000421- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000422 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
423 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
424 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
425 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
426
427 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
428 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
429 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
430 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
431 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000432
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000433- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
434 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
435 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
436
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000437- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
438
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000439- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
440
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000441- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
442 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
443 illegal argument)
444
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000445- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
446 is an error in the format string.
447
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000448- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
449
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000450- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000451 "parent" argument.
452
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000453- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
454 for padding.
455
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000456- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
457 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
458
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000459- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
460 to get the correct encoding.
461
462- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
463 languages.
464
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000465- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
466
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000467- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
468
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000469- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
470
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000471- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
472 functionality.
473
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000474- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
475
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000476- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
477 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
478
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000479- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
480 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
481 match the Content-Length header.
482
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000483- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
484
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000485- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
486 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000487 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000488
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000489- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
490
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000491- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
492
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000493- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
494 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
495
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000496- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
497 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
498 Tkdnd.
499
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000500- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
501 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
502
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000503- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
504 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
505
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000506- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000507 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
508
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000509- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
510 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
511
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000512- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
513 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
514
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000515- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000516 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000517
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000518- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
519
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000520- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
521 error messages.
522
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000523- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
524
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000525- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
526 Bug #1224621.
527
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000528- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
529 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
530 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
531 terminates by raising StopIteration.
532
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000533- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
534
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000535- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
536 component of the path.
537
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000538- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
539 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
540 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
541 class at all.
542
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000543- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
544 files to PyPI.
545
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000546- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
547 them to PyPI.
548
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000549- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
550 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
551 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
552 work as expected.
553
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000554- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
555 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
556
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000557- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000558 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
559
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000560- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
561
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000562- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
563 to build.
564
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000565- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
566 symbolic links on Windows.
567
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000568- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000569 profile.py if available.
570
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000571- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
572
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000573- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
574 in LWPCookieJar.
575
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000576- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
577
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000578- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
579
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000580- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
581
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000582- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
583
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000584- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
585
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000586- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
587
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000588- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
589
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000590- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
591
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000592- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
593 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
594 be exploited in various ways.
595
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000596- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000597 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
598
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000599- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
600 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
601
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000602- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000603 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
604
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000605- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
606
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000607- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
608
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000609- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
610
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000611- Enhancements to the csv module:
612
613 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000614 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000615 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000616 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
617 reporting.
618 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
619 dictates.
620 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000621 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000622 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000623 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
624 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000625 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
626 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000627 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000628 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
629 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
630 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
631 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
632 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
633 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
634 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
635 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
636 without first creating a dialect class.
637 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
638 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
639 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000640 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000641 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
642 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000643 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
644 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
645 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
646 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000647 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
648 This has been fixed.
649
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000650- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
651 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
652 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
653 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
654
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000655- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
656
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000657- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
658 (Bug #951915).
659
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000660- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
661 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
662 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000663 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000664
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000665- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
666
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000667- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
668 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
669
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000670- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
671
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000672- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
673
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000674- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
675
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000676- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
677
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000678- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
679
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000680- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
681 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
682 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
683
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000684- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000685 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000686
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000687- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
688 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
689 tokenizer with very long source lines.
690
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000691- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
692 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
693 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000694
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000695- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
696 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000697
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000698- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
699 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
700
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000701- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
702 correctly.
703
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000704- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
705 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
706 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
707 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
708 between two lines.
709
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000710- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
711 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
712 handlers.
713
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000714- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000715 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
716 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000717
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000718- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
719 considering it exactly like a '*'.
720
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000721- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
722 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000723
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000724- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
725
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000726- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
727 touch the recursion limit.
728
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000729Build
730-----
731
Martin v. Löwis86d66262006-02-17 08:40:11 +0000732- Patch #1432345: Make python compile on DragonFly.
733
Martin v. Löwis856bf9a2006-02-14 20:42:55 +0000734- Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added.
735
Martin v. Löwisa55e55e2006-02-11 15:55:14 +0000736- Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library.
737
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000738- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
739
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000740- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
741 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
742
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000743- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
744
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000745- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
746 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
747
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000748- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
749 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
750
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000751- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
752 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
753 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000754 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000755
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000756- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
757 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
758 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
759
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000760- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
761
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000762- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
763 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
764
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000765- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
766 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
767 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
768 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
769 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
770 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
771 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
772 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
773
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000774- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
775 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
776 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
777 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
778
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000779C API
780-----
781
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000782- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
783
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000784- Removed PyRange_New().
785
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000786- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
787 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
788 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
789 mappings.
790
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000791
792Tests
793-----
794
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000795- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000796
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000797- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
798 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
799
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000800
801Documentation
802-------------
803
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000804- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
805
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000806- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
807 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
808
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000809- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
810
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000811- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
812
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000813- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
814
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000815- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
816
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000817- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
818
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000819- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
820
821- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
822
823- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
824
825- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
826
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000827- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
828 Closes bug #1166582.
829
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000830- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
831 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
832 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
833
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000834Mac
835---
836
837
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000838New platforms
839-------------
840
841- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
842
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000843
844Tools/Demos
845-----------
846
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000847- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
848 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
849 source files that need an encoding declaration.
850 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
851
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000852- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
853
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000854- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000855
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000856- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
857 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000858
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000859What's New in Python 2.4 final?
860===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000861
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000862*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000863
864Core and builtins
865-----------------
866
867- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
868 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
869 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
870
871
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000872What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
873==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000874
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000875*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000876
877Core and builtins
878-----------------
879
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000880- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
881 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
882 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
883
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000884
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000885Library
886-------
887
888- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
889 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
890 raised is re-raised.
891
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000892- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
893 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
894
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000895- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
896 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
897 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
898 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
899 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
900 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
901 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
902 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
903 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
904 by the slice are recomputed now.
905
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000906- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000907
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000908Build
909-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000910
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000911- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
912 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
913 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000914
915C API
916-----
917
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000918- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
919
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000920
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000921What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
922================================
923
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000924*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000925
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000926License
927-------
928
929The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
930is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
931changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
932Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
933intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
934durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
935the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
936License::
937
938 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
939
940says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
941to Python 2.1.1.
942
943The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
944License Version 2.
945
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000946Core and builtins
947-----------------
948
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000949- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
950 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
951 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
952 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
953 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
954 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
955 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000956 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000957 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
958 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
959
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000960- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000961
962Extension Modules
963-----------------
964
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000965- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
966 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
967 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
968 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000969
970Library
971-------
972
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000973- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
974 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
975 returned.
976
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000977- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
978
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000979- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
980 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
981
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000982- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
983
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000984- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
985 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000986
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000987- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
988
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000989- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
990
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000991- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000992 the source code is updated and reloaded.
993
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000994Build
995-----
996
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000997- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000998
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000999What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
1000================================
1001
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +00001002*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001003
1004Core and builtins
1005-----------------
1006
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001007- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +00001008 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
1009
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +00001010- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
1011 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
1012 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
1013 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
1014
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001015- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
1016 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
1017
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +00001018- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
1019 constant.
1020
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001021- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
1022 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
1023 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
1024 large), and to anomalies such as
1025 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
1026 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
1027 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
1028 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001029
1030Extension modules
1031-----------------
1032
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +00001033- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
1034 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001035 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
1036 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
1037 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001038
1039Library
1040-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001041
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001042- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001043 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001044 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
1045 --swig-cpp.
1046
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +00001047- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
1048 it is set.
1049
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +00001050- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +00001051
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +00001052- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1053 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1054 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1055 Closes bug #1039270.
1056
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001057- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001058
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001059 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001060 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1061 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1062 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1063 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1064 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1065 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1066 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1067 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1068 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1069 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1070 + Updates to documentation.
1071
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001072- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1073 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1074 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1075 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1076
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001077- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001078
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001079- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1080 applications should use the getmember function.
1081
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001082- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1083
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001084- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1085 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1086 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1087 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1088 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1089 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1090 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1091 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1092 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1093
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001094- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1095 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001096 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001097
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001098- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1099 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1100 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1101 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1102 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1103 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1104 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1105 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001106
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001107- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1108 the new public features (of which there are many).
1109
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001110- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001111 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1112 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1113 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1114 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001115 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001116
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001117- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1118
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001119- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1120 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1121 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1122 options.
1123
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001124- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1125 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1126 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1127 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1128 conditions under which non-string values work.
1129
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001130Build
1131-----
1132
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001133- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1134 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1135 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1136
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001137- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1138 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1139 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1140 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1141 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001142
1143C API
1144-----
1145
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001146- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1147 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1148
1149- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1150
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001151- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1152 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1153 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1154 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1155 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1156 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1157 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1158 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1159 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1160
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001161- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1162
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001163- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1164 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1165 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001166
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001167Tests
1168-----
1169
1170- test__locale ported to unittest
1171
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001172Mac
1173---
1174
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001175- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1176 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1177 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001178
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001179Tools/Demos
1180-----------
1181
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001182- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1183 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1184 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1185 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1186 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001187
1188
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001189What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1190=================================
1191
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001192*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001193
1194Core and builtins
1195-----------------
1196
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001197- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001198 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1199
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001200- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1201 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1202 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1203 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1204 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1205 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1206 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1207 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001208 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1209 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1210 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1211 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1212 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001213
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001214- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1215 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1216 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1217 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1218 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1219
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001220- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1221
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001222- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1223 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1224
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001225- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1226 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1227 modified the list.
1228
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001229- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1230 functions is now writable.
1231
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001232- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1233 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1234 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1235 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1236
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001237- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1238 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1239 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1240 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1241 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001242
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001243- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1244 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1245
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001246Extension modules
1247-----------------
1248
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001249- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1250
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001251- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1252 data.
1253
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001254- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1255 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1256 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1257 supposed to have been truncated away.
1258
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001259- Added socket.socketpair().
1260
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001261- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1262 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1263
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001264- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001265 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1266
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001267Library
1268-------
1269
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001270- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001271 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001272
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001273- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1274 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1275
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001276- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1277 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1278
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001279- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1280
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001281- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1282 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001283
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001284- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1285 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1286
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001287- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1288
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001289- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1290
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001291- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1292
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001293- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1294 Percivall.
1295
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001296- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1297 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1298
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001299- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1300 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1301 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001302 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001303
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001304- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1305 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1306 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1307 and exponent.
1308
1309- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1310
1311- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001312 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001313 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1314
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001315- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1316 to the readline module.
1317
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001318- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001319 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1320 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001321
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001322- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1323 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1324 contains symlinks.
1325
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001326- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1327 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1328
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001329- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1330 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1331 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1332
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001333- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1334 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1335 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1336 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1337 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1338 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1339 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1340 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1341 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1342 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1343 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1344 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1345 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1346
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001347- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1348
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001349Tools/Demos
1350-----------
1351
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001352- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1353 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1354
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001355- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1356
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001357Build
1358-----
1359
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001360- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1361 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1362 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1363 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1364 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1365 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1366 plans to do so.
1367
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001368- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1369 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1370
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001371- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1372 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1373
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001374- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1375 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1376
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001377- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1378 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1379
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001380- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1381 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1382
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001383C API
1384-----
1385
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001386..
1387
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001388Documentation
1389-------------
1390
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001391- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1392 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1393
1394- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1395 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1396 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001397
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001398New platforms
1399-------------
1400
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001401- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1402
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001403Tests
1404-----
1405
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001406..
1407
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001408Windows
1409-------
1410
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001411- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1412 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1413 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1414 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1415 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1416 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1417 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1418 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1419 the problem.
1420
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001421Mac
1422---
1423
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001424..
1425
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001426
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001427What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1428=================================
1429
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001430*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001431
1432Core and builtins
1433-----------------
1434
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001435- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1436 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1437 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1438 sensitive code.
1439
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001440- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001441 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001442
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001443 @staticmethod
1444 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001445
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001446 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001447
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001448- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1449 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1450 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1451 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1452 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1453 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1454 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1455 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1456 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1457 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1458 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1459
1460 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1461 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1462 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1463 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1464 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1465 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1466 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1467
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001468- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1469 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1470
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001471- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001472 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001473
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001474- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001475 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001476 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1477
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001478- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001479 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1480 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1481
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001482- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1483 types that support garbage collection.
1484
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001485- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1486
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001487- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1488 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1489 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1490 Jython.
1491
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001492- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1493
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001494- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1495 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1496
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001497- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1498 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1499 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001500
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001501- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1502 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1503 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1504
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001505Extension modules
1506-----------------
1507
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001508- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1509
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001510Library
1511-------
1512
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001513- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1514 TIS-620
1515
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001516- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1517 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1518 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1519 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1520 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1521 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1522 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1523 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1524 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1525 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1526
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001527- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1528
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001529- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1530 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1531 same as when the argument is omitted).
1532 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1533
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001534- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1535
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001536- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1537 schemes are offered.
1538
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001539- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1540
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001541- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1542 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1543 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1544
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001545- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1546
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001547- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1548 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1549
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001550- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1551 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1552 when dummy_threading is being used.
1553
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001554- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1555 from a tarfile.
1556
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001557- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001558 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001559
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001560- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1561 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1562 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1563 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1564
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001565- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1566 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1567
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001568- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1569 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1570 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1571 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1572 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1573 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1574 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1575 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1576 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1577 by some other method in progress).
1578
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001579- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1580 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1581 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001582
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001583- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1584
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001585- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1586 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1587 AM Kuchling.
1588
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001589- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1590 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1591 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1592
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001593- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1594 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1595 instead of unsigned.
1596
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001597- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001598 no longer part of the public API.
1599
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001600- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1601 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1602 string methods of the same name).
1603
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001604- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001605 SF patch 945642.
1606
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001607- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1608
1609 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1610
1611 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1612 DocTestSuites.
1613
1614- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1615 that provide thread-local data.
1616
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001617- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1618 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1619
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001620- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1621
1622- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1623 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1624 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1625
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001626- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1627
1628 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1629 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1630 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001631
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001632 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1633 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1634 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1635 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1636
1637 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1638 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1639
1640 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1641 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1642 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1643 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1644
1645 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1646 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1647 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1648 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1649 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1650
1651 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1652 wrapping help output.
1653
1654 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1655 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1656 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001657
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001658C API
1659-----
1660
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001661- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1662 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1663 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1664 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1665 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1666 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1667 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1668 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1669 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1670 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1671 its visible semantics have not changed.
1672
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001673- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1674 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1675
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001676Documentation
1677-------------
1678
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001679- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001680
1681 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001682 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001683
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001684 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001685
1686 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1687
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001688- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001689
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001690Tests
1691-----
1692
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001693- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001694 platforms that use the Makefile.
1695
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001696- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1697 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1698 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1699
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001700
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001701What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1702=================================
1703
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001704*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001705
1706Core and builtins
1707-----------------
1708
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001709- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1710 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1711 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1712 objects now (one object instead of three).
1713
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001714- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1715 Windows DLLs.
1716
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001717- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1718 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001719
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001720- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1721 a new .pyc magic.
1722
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001723- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1724 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1725 be there.
1726
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001727- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1728 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1729 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1730
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001731- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1732 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1733 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1734
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001735- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1736
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001737- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1738 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1739 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001740
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001741- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1742 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1743
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001744- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1745
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001746- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001747 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001748
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001749- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1750
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001751- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1752
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001753- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1754 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1755
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001756- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1757 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1758 Fixes bug #858016 .
1759
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001760- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1761 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1762 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1763
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001764- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1765 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1766 improves their performance (about 35%).
1767
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001768- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1769 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1770 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1771
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001772- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1773 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1774 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1775 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1776
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001777- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1778 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001779 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001780 length is not known).
1781
1782- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1783 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001784 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1785 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001786 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1787
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001788- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1789 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1790
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001791- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1792 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1793 keyword arguments.
1794
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001795- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1796 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1797 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1798
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001799- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1800 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1801 cases.
1802
1803- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1804 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1805 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1806 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1807 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1808 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1809 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1810 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1811 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1812 a release build.
1813
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001814- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1815 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1816
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001817- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001818 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001819
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001820- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1821 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1822 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1823 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1824 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1825 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1826 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1827 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1828 destroyed.
1829
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001830- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1831 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1832 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1833 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1834 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1835 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1836 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1837 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1838
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001839- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1840 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1841 character other than a space.
1842
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001843- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1844 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1845 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1846 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1847 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1848 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1849 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1850 attributes with the same name.
1851
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001852- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1853 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1854 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1855 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1856 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1857 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1858 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1859 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1860 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1861 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1862 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1863 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1864 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1865 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001866
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001867- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1868 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1869 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1870 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1871 This has been repaired.
1872
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001873- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1874
1875- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1876
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001877- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1878 over a sequence.
1879
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001880- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001881 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001882
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001883- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1884
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001885- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1886 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1887 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1888 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1889 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1890 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1891 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1892 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1893
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001894- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1895 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1896 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1897
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001898- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1899 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1900 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1901 freelist.
1902
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001903- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1904 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1905
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001906- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1907 number.
1908
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001909- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1910 a TypeError exception.
1911
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001912- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1913 820195.
1914
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001915- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1916 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1917 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1918
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001919- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001920 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1921 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001922
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001923- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1924 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1925 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1926
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001927- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1928 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001929 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001930
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001931- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001932 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1933 the first call.
1934
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001935
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001936Extension modules
1937-----------------
1938
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001939- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1940 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1941
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001942- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1943 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1944 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1945 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1946 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1947 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1948 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001949
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001950- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1951
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001952- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1953
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001954- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1955 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1956
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001957- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1958 fewer false positives.
1959
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001960- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1961 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1962
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001963- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001964 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1965
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001966- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001967 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001968 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001969 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1970 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001971
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001972- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1973 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1974 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1975 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1976
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001977- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1978 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1979 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1980 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1981 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1982 #897625.
1983
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001984- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1985 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1986
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001987- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1988 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1989 and pops on either side of the deque.
1990
1991- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1992 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1993
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001994- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1995 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1996 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1997 other functions that expect a function argument.
1998
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001999- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
2000
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002001- os.getsid was added.
2002
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00002003- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
2004 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
2005 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
2006
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00002007- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
2008
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00002009- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
2010
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00002011- readline.clear_history was added.
2012
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00002013- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
2014
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00002015- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
2016
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00002017- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
2018
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00002019- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
2020
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00002021- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
2022
2023- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
2024
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00002025- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
2026
2027- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
2028
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002029- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
2030 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
2031 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
2032
2033- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
2034 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
2035 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
2036 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
2037 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
2038 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
2039 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
2040
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00002041- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
2042 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
2043 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
2044 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002045
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002046- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002047 iterators from a single iterable.
2048
2049- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
2050 of raising a TypeError exception.
2051
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00002052- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2053 as parameter.
2054
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002055Library
2056-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002057
Armin Rigoa871ef22006-02-08 12:53:56 +00002058- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
2059 profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
2060 profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
2061 Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
2062
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002063- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2064
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002065- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2066 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2067 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002068
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002069- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2070 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2071 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002072
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002073- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002074
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002075- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2076 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002077
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002078- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2079 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2080
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002081- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2082
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002083- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002084 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002085
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002086- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002087 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002088
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002089- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2090
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002091- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2092 on cygwin and mingw32.
2093
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002094- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2095
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002096- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2097 module.
2098
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002099- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2100 installation scheme for all platforms.
2101
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002102- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002103 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002104
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002105- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2106 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2107 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2108
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002109- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2110 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2111 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2112
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002113- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2114
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002115- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2116
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002117- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2118 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2119
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002120- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2121 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2122 type pattern with the same value exists.
2123
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002124- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2125 when run from the command prompt).
2126
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002127- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2128 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2129
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002130- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2131 default sort).
2132
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002133- Added global runctx function to profile module
2134
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002135- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2136
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002137- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2138
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002139- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2140
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002141- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002142 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2143 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2144 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2145 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2146 accordingly.
2147
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002148- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2149 decoding standards.
2150
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002151- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2152 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2153 called for all requests.
2154
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002155- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2156 they are passed to the compiler.
2157
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002158- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2159 indent, width and depth.
2160
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002161- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2162 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2163
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002164- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2165 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2166
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002167- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2168
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002169- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2170
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002171- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2172
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002173- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2174 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2175
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002176- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002177 for better performance.
2178
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002179- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002180
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002181- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2182 a string).
2183
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002184- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2185
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002186- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2187
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002188- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2189
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002190- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2191
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002192- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2193 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2194 list of fieldnames.
2195
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002196- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2197 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2198
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002199- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2200
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002201- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2202 empty lists.
2203
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002204- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2205 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2206 and shelves.
2207
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002208- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2209 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2210
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002211- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002212 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2213 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002214
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002215- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2216 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002217 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002218
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002219- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002220 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2221 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2222
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002223- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2224 and removed in Py2.4.
2225
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002226- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2227
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002228- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2229
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002230Tools/Demos
2231-----------
2232
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002233- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2234 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2235
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002236- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2237
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002238- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2239 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2240 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2241 destination in situations where both files are given.
2242
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002243- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2244 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2245 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2246 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2247
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002248- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2249
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002250- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2251 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2252 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2253 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2254 now.
2255
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002256- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2257 in effect
2258
2259- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2260 C-c C-h
2261
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002262- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2263 -d option was given.
2264
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002265Build
2266-----
2267
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002268- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2269 build under OS X.
2270
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002271- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2272 --enable-profiling.
2273
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002274- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2275 is configured --with-tsc.
2276
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002277- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2278 on AMD64.
2279
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002280- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2281 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2282
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002283- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2284 removed.
2285
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002286- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2287 supported (see PEP 11).
2288
2289- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2290
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002291- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2292
2293- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2294 (see PEP 11).
2295
2296- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2297 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2298
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002299C API
2300-----
2301
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002302- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2303 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2304 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2305
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002306- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2307 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2308 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2309 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2310
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002311- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2312 generator objects.
2313
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002314- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2315 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002316 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2317 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002318
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002319- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2320 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2321
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002322- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2323 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2324 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2325 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2326 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2327
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002328- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2329 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2330 about 10% faster.
2331
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002332- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2333 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2334
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002335- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2336 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2337 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2338 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2339
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002340Windows
2341-------
2342
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002343- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2344 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2345 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2346 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2347
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002348- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2349 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2350 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2351
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002352
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002353What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2354===============================
2355
2356*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2357
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002358IDLE
2359----
2360
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002361- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2362 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2363 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2364 context-menu actions.
2365
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002366- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2367 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2368 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2369 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2370 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2371 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2372 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2373 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2374 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2375
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002376
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002377What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2378=============================================
2379
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002380*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002381
2382Core and builtins
2383-----------------
2384
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002385- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002386 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002387 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2388
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002389Extension modules
2390-----------------
2391
2392- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2393 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2394 than once. This has been fixed.
2395
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002396- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2397 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2398 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2399 call.
2400
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002401- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2402
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002403Library
2404-------
2405
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002406- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2407 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2408
2409- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2410 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2411 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2412 restored.
2413
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002414IDLE
2415----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002416
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002417- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002418
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002419Build
2420-----
2421
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002422- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2423 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2424
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002425C API
2426-----
2427
2428Windows
2429-------
2430
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002431- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2432 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2433
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002434- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2435
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002436Mac
2437---
2438
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002439- Various fixes to pimp.
2440
2441- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2442
2443- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2444 more problems than it solves.
2445
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002446
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002447What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2448=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002449
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002450*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2451
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002452Core and builtins
2453-----------------
2454
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002455- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2456 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2457
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002458- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2459 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002460 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002461
2462- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2463 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2464 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002465 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002466
2467- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2468 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002469
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002470- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2471 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2472 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2473
2474- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002475 770247.
2476
2477- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002478
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002479Extension modules
2480-----------------
2481
2482- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2483 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2484
2485- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2486
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002487- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2488
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002489- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2490 contained within the _strptime module.
2491
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002492- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2493 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2494
2495- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002496 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2497
2498- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2499 the find_class attribute, if present.
2500
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002501- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002502
2503 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2504 (SF bug 763298).
2505
2506 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002507 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2508 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2509 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002510
2511 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2512
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002513Library
2514-------
2515
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002516- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2517
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002518- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2519 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2520 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2521 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2522 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2523 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2524 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2525 or Tester().
2526
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002527- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2528 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2529 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2530 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2531 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2532 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2533 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2534 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2535 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002536
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002537 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002538
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002539- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2540 weren't before was an oversight.
2541
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002542- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2543 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2544
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002545- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2546 when there are no lines.
2547
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002548- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2549 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2550
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002551- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2552 to child processes.
2553
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002554- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2555
2556- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2557
2558- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2559 xmlrpclib.
2560
2561- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2562 responses.
2563
2564- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2565 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2566
2567- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2568 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2569 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2570
2571- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2572 used as patterns.
2573
2574- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2575 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2576 than Tk 8.3.
2577
2578- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2579
2580- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002581
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002582Tools/Demos
2583-----------
2584
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002585- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2586
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002587- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2588
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002589- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002590
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002591Build
2592-----
2593
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002594- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2595
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002596- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2597
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002598- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2599 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002600
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002601- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2602 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2603 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002604
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002605C API
2606-----
2607
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002608- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2609 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2610
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002611Windows
2612-------
2613
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002614- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2615 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2616 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2617 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2618 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2619 Python exception ::
2620
2621 thread.error: can't start new thread
2622
2623 is raised now.
2624
2625- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2626 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2627 instead of from DLL teardown.
2628
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002629Mac
2630---
2631
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002632- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002633 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002634 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2635 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2636 the executable in the bundle.
2637
2638- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002639
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002640- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2641
2642- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2643 on Panther.
2644
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002645What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2646================================
2647
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002648*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002649
2650Core and builtins
2651-----------------
2652
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002653- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2654 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2655 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2656 with the -i option.
2657
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002658- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2659 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2660
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002661- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2662 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2663
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002664- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2665 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2666 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2667 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2668 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2669 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2670 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2671 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2672 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2673 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2674 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2675 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2676 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002677
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002678- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2679 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2680 embedded in a lambda expression.
2681
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002682- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2683 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2684 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2685 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2686 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2687
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002688- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2689 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2690 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2691
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002692- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2693 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2694
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002695- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2696 It's writable again.
2697
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002698- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2699 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2700 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002701 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002702
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002703- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2704 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2705 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2706
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002707Extension modules
2708-----------------
2709
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002710- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2711 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2712
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002713- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2714 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2715 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2716 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2717
2718- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2719 collection.
2720
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002721- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2722 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2723 unique within a single program run.
2724
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002725- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2726 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2727
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002728- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2729 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2730
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002731- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2732 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002733
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002734- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2735
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002736- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2737 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2738
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002739- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2740 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2741 for many BSD-derived systems.
2742
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002743
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002744Library
2745-------
2746
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002747- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2748 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2749 primary ones:
2750
2751 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2752 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2753 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2754
2755 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2756 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2757 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2758 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2759 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2760 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2761
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002762- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2763 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2764 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2765 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2766 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2767 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2768 argument.
2769
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002770- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2771 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2772 in the archive.
2773
2774- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2775 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2776
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002777- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2778 569574).
2779
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002780- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2781 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2782 no more.
2783
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002784- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2785 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2786 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2787 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2788 code coverage.
2789
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002790- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2791 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2792 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002793 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2794 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002795
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002796- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2797 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2798 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002799 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002800
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002801- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2802
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002803- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2804 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2805 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2806 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2807
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002808- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2809 handling.
2810
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002811- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2812 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2813
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002814- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2815 in socket.py.
2816
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002817- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2818
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002819- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2820 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2821 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2822 opener with proxy support.
2823
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002824- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2825
2826- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2827
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002828Tools/Demos
2829-----------
2830
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002831- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2832
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002833- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2834
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002835- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2836 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002837
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002838- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2839 files.
2840
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002841Build
2842-----
2843
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002844- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002845 different root directory.
2846
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002847C API
2848-----
2849
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002850- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2851 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2852 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2853 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2854 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2855 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2856 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2857 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2858 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2859 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2860
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002861- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2862 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2863 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2864 from Python.
2865
2866
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002867New platforms
2868-------------
2869
2870None this time.
2871
2872Tests
2873-----
2874
2875- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2876 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2877
2878Windows
2879-------
2880
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002881- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2882
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002883- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2884 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2885 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2886 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2887 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2888 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2889 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2890 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2891 that's what it's for.
2892
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002893Mac
2894---
2895
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002896- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2897 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2898 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2899 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002900- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2901 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2902- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002903
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002904SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2905------------------------------------
2906
2907430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2908598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2909622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2910661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2911683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2912697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2913713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2914724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2915727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2916729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2917730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2918731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2919732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2920733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2921735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2922740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2923744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2924745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2925747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2926749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2927751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2928753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2929755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2930757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2931760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2932
2933
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002934What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2935================================
2936
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002937*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002938
2939Core and builtins
2940-----------------
2941
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002942- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2943 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2944
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002945- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2946 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2947 and cannot be strings).
2948
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002949- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2950 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2951 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2952 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2953
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002954- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2955 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2956 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2957 Python itself.
2958
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002959- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2960 the referenced object, if it has one.
2961
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002962- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2963 the thread started at
2964 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2965
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002966- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2967 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2968 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2969 placed on a list index.
2970
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002971- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2972 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2973 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2974 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2975
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002976- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2977 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2978 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2979 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2980 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2981 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2982 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2983
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002984- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2985 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2986 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2987 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2988 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2989
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002990- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2991 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002992
2993- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2994 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2995 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2996 #693195.)
2997
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002998- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2999 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003000
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003001- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00003002 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003003 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
3004 interpreter executions, would fail.
3005
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003006- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00003007 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00003008 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003009
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003010Extension modules
3011-----------------
3012
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00003013- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
3014 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
3015 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
3016 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
3017
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00003018- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
3019 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
3020
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00003021- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
3022 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
3023 and Greg Chapman.)
3024
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003025- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
3026 recursively.
3027
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00003028- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00003029 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
3030 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
3031 leaks.
3032
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00003033- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
3034
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00003035- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
3036 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
3037 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
3038 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
3039 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
3040 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
3041 #705836.
3042
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00003043- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00003044 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
3045
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00003046- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
3047 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
3048 See SF bug #692416.
3049
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00003050- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
3051 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
3052
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00003053- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
3054 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
3055 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003056
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003057- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003058 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3059 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3060
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003061- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3062 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3063 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3064 timeouts to work properly.
3065
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003066Library
3067-------
3068
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003069- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3070 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3071 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3072 future release.
3073
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003074- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3075 for querying platform dependent features.
3076
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003077- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003078
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003079- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3080 pickle protocol versions.
3081
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003082- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3083 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3084 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3085
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003086- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3087
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003088- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3089 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3090 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3091 modules.
3092
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003093- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3094 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3095 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3096
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003097- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3098 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3099
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003100- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3101 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3102 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3103
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003104- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003105 MS Office extensions.
3106
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003107- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3108 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3109
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003110- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3111 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3112
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003113- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3114 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3115 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3116 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3117 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3118 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3119
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003120- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3121 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3122 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003123
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003124- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3125 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3126 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3127
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003128- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3129
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003130- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3131 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3132 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3133
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003134Tools/Demos
3135-----------
3136
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003137- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3138 See the module docstring for details.
3139
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003140Build
3141-----
3142
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003143- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3144 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003145
3146C API
3147-----
3148
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003149- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3150
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003151- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3152 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3153 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3154
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003155- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3156 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003157
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003158 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3159 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3160 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003161
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003162- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003163 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3164
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003165- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3166 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3167 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003168
3169New platforms
3170-------------
3171
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003172None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003173
3174Tests
3175-----
3176
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003177- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3178 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003179
3180Windows
3181-------
3182
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003183- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3184 function.
3185
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003186- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3187 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003188
3189Mac
3190---
3191
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003192- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3193 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003194
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003195- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3196 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003197
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003198- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3199 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3200 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003201
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003202- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003203 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3204 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003205
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003206- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3207 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003208
3209
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003210What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3211=================================
3212
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003213*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003214
3215Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003216-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003217
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003218- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3219 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3220 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3221
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003222- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3223 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3224 (SF patch #664376.)
3225
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003226- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3227 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3228 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3229 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3230 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3231 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003232 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003233
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003234- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3235 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3236 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3237 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003238 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003239
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003240- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3241 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3242 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3243 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3244 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3245 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3246 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3247 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3248 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3249 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3250 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3251
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003252- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3253 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3254 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3255 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3256 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3257 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3258
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003259- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3260 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3261
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003262- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3263 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3264 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3265 case.)
3266
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003267- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3268 passed as unicode strings.
3269
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003270- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3271 See SF bug #683467.
3272
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003273- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3274 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3275
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003276- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3277
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003278- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3279
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003280- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3281 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3282 arguments.
3283
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003284- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3285 See SF bug #667147.
3286
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003287- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003288 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003289 See SF bug #676155.
3290
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003291- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003292 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003293 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3294 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3295 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3296 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3297 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3298 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003299
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003300Extension modules
3301-----------------
3302
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003303- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3304 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3305 tp_as_number pointer.
3306
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003307- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3308 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3309 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3310 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3311 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3312
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003313- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3314
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003315- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3316
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003317- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003318 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003319 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3320 patch #678531.)
3321
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003322- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3323 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3324
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003325- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3326 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3327
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003328- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3329
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003330- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3331 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3332 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3333
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003334- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3335
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003336- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3337 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3338
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003339- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003340
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003341- datetime changes:
3342
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003343 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3344
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003345 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3346 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3347 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3348 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3349 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3350 now.
3351
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003352 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003353 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3354 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003355
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003356 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003357 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003358 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3359 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3360 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3361 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003362
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003363 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3364 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3365 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003366 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3367
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003368 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3369 by a later example coded by Guido.
3370
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003371 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003372 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3373 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3374 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003375 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3376 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3377
3378 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3379 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3380 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3381 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3382 tzinfo subclass instance.
3383
3384 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3385 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3386 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3387 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3388 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3389 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3390 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3391 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003392
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003393 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3394 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3395 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3396 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3397 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003398 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3399
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003400 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003401
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003402 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3403 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3404 as a naive datetime object.
3405
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003406 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3407 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3408 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3409
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003410 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3411 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3412 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3413 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3414 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3415 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3416 comparison.
3417
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003418 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3419 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3420 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3421 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003422 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003423
3424 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003425
3426 and ::
3427
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003428 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3429
3430 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3431 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3432 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3433 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3434
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003435 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3436 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3437 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3438 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3439 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3440
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003441 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3442 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003443 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3444 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003445
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003446Library
3447-------
3448
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003449- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3450 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3451
3452- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3453 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3454 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3455 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3456 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3457 See PEP 307 for details.
3458
3459- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3460 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3461
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003462- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3463 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003464 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003465 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3466 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003467 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003468
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003469- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3470 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3471
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003472- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3473 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3474 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3475
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003476- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3477
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003478- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3479 exception.
3480
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003481- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3482 class.
3483
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003484- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3485 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3486 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3487
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003488- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3489 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3490
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003491- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003492 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3493 See SF bug #659228.
3494
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003495- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3496 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3497 See SF patch #651082.
3498
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003499- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003500
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003501- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3502 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3503
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003504- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003505 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003506
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003507- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3508 DOS paths from other platforms.
3509
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003510Tools/Demos
3511-----------
3512
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003513- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3514 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3515 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3516 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3517 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3518 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3519 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3520 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3521 example:
3522
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003523 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3524 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003525
3526 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3527
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003528
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003529Build
3530-----
3531
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003532- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3533 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3534 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003535 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3536
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003537 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3538
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003539- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3540 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3541 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3542 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3543 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3544 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3545 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3546 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3547 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3548
3549- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3550 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3551 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3552 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3553
3554- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3555 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3556
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003557C API
3558-----
3559
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003560- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3561 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003562
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003563- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3564 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3565 tp_as_number pointer.
3566
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003567- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3568 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3569 (SF #681367)
3570
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003571- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3572 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3573 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3574 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003575
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003576Tests
3577-----
3578
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003579- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003580 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3581 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3582 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3583 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3584 pydoc.)
3585
3586- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3587
3588- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003589
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003590Windows
3591-------
3592
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003593- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3594 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3595 time).
3596
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003597- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3598 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3599
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003600- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3601 release without strong cryptography.
3602
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003603- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003604 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003605
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003606- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3607 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3608
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003609Mac
3610---
3611
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003612- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3613 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003614
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003615- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3616 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3617 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003618
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003619- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3620 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003621
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003622- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3623 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3624 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3625 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003626
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003627- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003628 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3629 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3630 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003631
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003632
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003633What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003634=================================
3635
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003636*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003637
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003638Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003639--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003640
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003641- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3642
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003643- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3644 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003645 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003646 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003647 a different meaning than before.
3648
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003649- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003650 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003651 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003652
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003653- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003654 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003655 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003656
3657- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3658 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3659 and deallocation.
3660
3661- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3662 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3663
3664- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3665 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3666 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3667 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3668 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3669
3670- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3671 now detected by the garbage collector.
3672
3673- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3674 [SF bug 519621]
3675
3676- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3677 identifier.
3678
3679- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3680 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3681 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3682 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3683 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3684 [SF bug 563060]
3685
3686- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3687 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3688 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3689 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3690 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3691
3692- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3693 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3694 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3695
3696- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3697
3698- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3699 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3700 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3701 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3702 state of the slots would be lost.)
3703
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003704Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003705-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003706
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003707- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003708 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3709 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3710 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3711 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003712 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3713 Jython 2.1.
3714
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003715- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003716 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003717 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3718 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3719 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3720 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3721 these, see PEP 302.
3722
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003723- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3724 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3725 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3726
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003727- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3728 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3729 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3730
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003731- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3732 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3733 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3734
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003735- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3736 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3737 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3738 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3739 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3740 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3741 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3742 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3743 releases or implementations.
3744
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003745- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003746 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3747 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003748
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003749- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3750 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3751
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003752- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3753 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3754 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3755
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003756- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3757 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3758
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003759- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3760 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003761 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3762 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003763
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003764- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3765 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3766 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3767 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3768 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3769
3770 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3771 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3772 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3773 pattern.
3774
3775 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3776 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3777 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3778 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3779
3780 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3781 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3782 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3783 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3784 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3785 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3786
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003787- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3788 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3789 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3790 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3791 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3792 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3793 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3794 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003795
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003796- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3797 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3798 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3799 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3800 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003801 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3802 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3803 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3804 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3805 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3806 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3807 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003808
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003809- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3810 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3811
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003812- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3813 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3814 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3815 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3816 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3817 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3818 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3819 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3820 to Zack Weinberg!
3821
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003822- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3823 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3824 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3825 type. This has been fixed now.
3826
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003827- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3828 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3829 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3830
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003831- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3832 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3833 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3834 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3835 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3836 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3837 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3838 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003839 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003840
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003841- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3842 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3843 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003844
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003845- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3846 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3847 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3848 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3849 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3850 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3851 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3852 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003853 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003854 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3855 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3856
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003857- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3858 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3859 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3860 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3861 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3862 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3863 this.)
3864
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003865- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3866 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003867 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003868 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003869 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3870 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003871 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3872 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003873
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003874- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3875 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3876 currently running.
3877
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003878- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3879 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3880 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3881 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3882
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003883- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3884 as directory names.
3885
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003886- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3887 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3888
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003889- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3890 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3891
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003892- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003893 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3894 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003895
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003896- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3897 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3898 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3899 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3900 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3901
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003902- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3903 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3904 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3905 removed.
3906
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003907- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3908 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3909 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3910
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003911- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3912 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3913 to __debug__.
3914
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003915- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3916 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3917 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3918
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003919- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3920 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3921 deprecated now.
3922
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003923- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3924 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3925 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003926
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003927- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3928 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3929 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3930 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3931 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003932
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003933- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3934 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3935
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003936- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3937 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3938 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003939 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003940 is backward compatible.
3941
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003942- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3943 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3944 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3945 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3946 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3947
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003948- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3949 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3950 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3951 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3952 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3953 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003954
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003955- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3956 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3957
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003958- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3959 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3960
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003961- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3962 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3963 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3964 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3965 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3966
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003967- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3968 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3969 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3970
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003971- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003972 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3973
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003974- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3975 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3976 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003977
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003978- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3979 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3980
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003981- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3982 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3983 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3984
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003985- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3986
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003987Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003988-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003989
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003990- Added three operators to the operator module:
3991 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3992 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3993 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3994
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003995- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3996
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003997- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3998 archives.
3999
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004000- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
4001 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
4002 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
4003
4004 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
4005
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004006- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
4007 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
4008 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00004009 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004010
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00004011- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
4012 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
4013 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
4014 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00004015 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
4016 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
4017 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
4018 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00004019
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00004020- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
4021 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00004022
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00004023- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
4024
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00004025- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
4026 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
4027
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00004028- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
4029 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
4030 supported.
4031
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00004032- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
4033
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00004034- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
4035 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00004036
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00004037- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
4038 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
4039
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00004040- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
4041
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004042- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
4043 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
4044
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00004045- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
4046 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
4047 functions but callable type objects.
4048
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004049- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004050 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004051 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004052
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00004053- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
4054 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00004055
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00004056- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
4057 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004058
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004059- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4060 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4061 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4062 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4063
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004064- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4065 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004066
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004067- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4068 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4069 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4070 and __imul__.
4071
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004072- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004073 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4074 is called.
4075
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004076- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4077 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4078 interpreter was compiled.
4079
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004080- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4081 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4082 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004083 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004084 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4085 1, not 2.
4086
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004087- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4088 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4089 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4090 limit.
4091
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004092- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4093 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4094 bug #623464.
4095
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004096- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4097 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4098 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4099 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4100
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004101Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004102-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004103
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004104- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4105
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004106- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4107 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4108 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4109 with Python 2.3a2.
4110
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004111- os.path exposes getctime.
4112
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004113- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004114 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004115 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004116 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004117 unit tests of floating point results.
4118
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004119- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4120 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4121 has been increased.
4122
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004123- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4124 executed.
4125
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004126- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4127 postinstallation script.
4128
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004129- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4130 test the current module.
4131
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004132- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004133 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4134 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4135 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4136 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4137
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004138- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004139 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004140 Ward's Optik package.
4141
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004142- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4143 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4144 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4145 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4146
4147- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4148 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004149 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004150
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004151- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4152 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4153 shelf are binary pickles.
4154
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004155- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4156 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4157
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004158- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4159 modules are iterators now.
4160
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004161- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4162 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4163 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4164 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4165 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4166 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004167
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004168- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4169 with their entity value.
4170
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004171- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4172
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004173- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4174 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004175
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004176- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4177 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004178 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004179
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004180- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4181 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4182 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4183 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4184 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4185 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4186 main():
4187
4188 import locale
4189 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4190
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004191- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4192 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4193
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004194- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4195 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4196 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4197 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4198 to the new standard.
4199
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004200- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4201 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4202 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4203 an extension to the database.
4204
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004205- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4206 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4207 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4208 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004209 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004210
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004211- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004212 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004213
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004214- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4215 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4216 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4217 bounded integers.
4218
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004219- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4220 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4221 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4222 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4223 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4224 in existence.
4225
4226 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4227 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4228 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4229 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4230 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4231 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4232
4233 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4234 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4235 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4236 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4237
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004238- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4239 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4240 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4241
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004242- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4243
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004244- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4245 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4246 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4247 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4248
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004249- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4250 argument.
4251
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004252- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4253 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4254 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4255 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4256 [SF patch 560794].
4257
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004258- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4259 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4260 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004261 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4262 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4263 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004264
4265- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4266 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004267
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004268- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4269 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4270 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4271 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004272
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004273- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4274 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4275 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4276 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4277 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4278
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004279- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004280
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004281- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4282
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004283- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4284 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4285 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4286 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4287 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4288 identical to None.
4289
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004290- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4291 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4292 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4293 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4294 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4295 results now.
4296
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004297- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4298 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4299
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004300- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4301 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4302 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4303 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4304 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4305 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4306 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4307 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4308
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004309- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4310
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004311- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4312 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4313
4314- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4315 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4316 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4317 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4318 and other systems.
4319
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004320- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4321 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4322 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4323 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 +00004324 work well with these.
4325
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004326- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4327
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004328- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004329 connections.
4330
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004331- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4332 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4333 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4334
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004335- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4336 sets
4337
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004338- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4339 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4340 name.
4341
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004342- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4343 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4344 passed in.
4345
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004346- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004347 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004348 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4349 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004350
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004351- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4352
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004353- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4354
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004355- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4356 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4357 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4358
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004359- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4360 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4361 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4362 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004363 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004364
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004365- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004366 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004367 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004368
4369- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4370 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4371 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4372
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004373- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004374 the value of its expression argument.
4375
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004376- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4377 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4378 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4379
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004380- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4381 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4382 skipstone browser was included.
4383
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004384- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4385 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4386
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004387Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004388-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004389
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004390- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4391 names in addition to accepting file names.
4392
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004393- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4394 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4395 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4396 still used and useful.)
4397
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004398- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4399 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4400 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4401 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004402
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004403- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4404 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4405 the generated binary.
4406
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004407Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004408-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004409
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004410- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4411
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004412- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4413 except in the hands of experts.
4414
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004415- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004416 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4417 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4418 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004419
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004420- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4421 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4422 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4423 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4424 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4425 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4426 builds.
4427
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004428- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4429 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4430 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4431 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4432 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4433 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4434 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4435 new type.
4436
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004437- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004438
4439 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4440 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4441 positive infinities.
4442
4443 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4444 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4445 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4446 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4447 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4448 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4449 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4450
4451 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4452
4453 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4454
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004455- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4456 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4457 size of the executable.
4458
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004459- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4460 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4461 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4462 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004463
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004464- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4465
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004466- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4467 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4468 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004469
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004470- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4471 well as Unix.
4472
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004473- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4474 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4475 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4476 modules in the README file for details.
4477
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004478C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004479-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004480
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004481- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4482 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004483 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004484 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004485 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004486
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004487- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4488 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4489 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4490 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4491 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4492 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004493 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004494 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4495 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4496 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4497 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4498 aligned.)
4499
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004500- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4501 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4502 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4503
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004504- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4505 level.
4506
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004507- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4508 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4509 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4510 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4511 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4512
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004513- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4514 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4515 code.
4516
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004517- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4518 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4519 adjusting for negative indices.
4520
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004521- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4522 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4523 object.
4524
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004525- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4526 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4527 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4528
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004529- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4530 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004531
4532- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4533
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004534- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4535 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4536 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4537 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4538
4539- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4540
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004541- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004542
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004543- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004544 without going through the buffer API.
4545
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004546- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004547
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004548- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4549 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4550 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4551 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4552
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004553- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4554 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4555
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004556- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004557 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4558
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004559New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004560-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004561
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004562- OpenVMS is now supported.
4563
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004564- AtheOS is now supported.
4565
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004566- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4567
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004568- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4569
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004570Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004571-----
4572
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004573- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4574 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4575 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004576
4577Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004578-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004579
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004580- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4581 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4582 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4583 bugs.
4584 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004585 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004586 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4587 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004588 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004589
4590- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004591 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004592
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004593- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4594 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4595
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004596- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4597 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004598 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004599 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4600
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004601- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4602 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4603 use files" uninstall option).
4604
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004605- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4606
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004607- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4608 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4609
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004610- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4611 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4612 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4613
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004614- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4615 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4616 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4617 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4618 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004619 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4620 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4621 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004622
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004623- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004624 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004625 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4626 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4627 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4628 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4629 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4630 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4631 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4632 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4633 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4634 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4635 work around.
4636
4637- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4638 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4639 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4640 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4641 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4642 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4643 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4644 specified with O_CREAT too).
4645
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004646Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004647----
4648
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004649- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004650
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004651- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4652 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4653 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4654
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004655- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4656 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4657 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4658
4659- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4660 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4661 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4662 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4663 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4664 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4665 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4666 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004667
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004668- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4669 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4670 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004671
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004672- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4673 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4674 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4675 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4676 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004677
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004678- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4679 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4680 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004681
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004682- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4683 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004684
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004685- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4686 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4687 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4688 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4689 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004690
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004691- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4692 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4693 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4694
4695- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4696 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4697 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004698
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004699- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4700 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4701 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4702 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004703 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004704
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004705- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4706 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004707
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004708- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4709 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004710
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004711- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004712 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004713 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4714 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004715
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004716
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004717What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004718===============================
4719
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004720*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4721
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004722Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004723--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004724
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004725- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4726 with a custom metaclass.
4727
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004728Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004729-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004730
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004731- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4732 are proxies.
4733
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004734Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004735-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004736
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004737- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4738 very short strings.
4739
4740- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4741 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4742 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4743 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4744 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4745
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004746Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004747-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004748
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004749- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4750 close or delete time).
4751
4752- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4753 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4754
4755- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4756
4757- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004758 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004759
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004760Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004761-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004762
4763Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004764-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004765
4766C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004767-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004768
4769New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004770-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004771
4772Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004773-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004774
4775Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004776-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004777
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004778- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4779
4780- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4781 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4782
4783- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4784 deleted at process exit time.
4785
4786- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4787 in backslash.
4788
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004789Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004790----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004791
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004792- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4793 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4794 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4795
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004796
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004797What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004798===========================
4799
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004800*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4801
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004802Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004803--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004804
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004805- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4806 been extensively updated. See
4807
4808 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4809
4810 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4811
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004812- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4813 deleted!
4814
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004815- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4816 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4817 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4818 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4819 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4820
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004821- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4822
4823 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4824 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4825
4826 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4827 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4828 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4829 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4830 supported anyway.
4831
4832 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4833 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4834
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004835- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4836 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4837 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4838 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4839 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004840
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004841- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4842 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4843 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4844
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004845Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004846-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004847
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004848- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4849 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4850 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4851 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4852 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4853 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004854 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4855 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4856 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4857 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004858
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004859- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4860 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4861 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4862
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004863Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004864-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004865
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004866- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4867
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004868Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004869-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004870
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004871- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4872 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4873 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4874 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4875 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4876 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4877
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004878- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4879
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004880- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4881
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004882- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4883
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004884- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4885 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4886 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4887
4888- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4889
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004890Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004891-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004892
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004893- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4894 off a search on Google.
4895
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004896Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004897-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004898
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004899- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4900 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4901 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4902 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4903 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4904 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4905 other platforms should do likewise.
4906
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004907- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4908 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4909 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4910
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004911C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004912-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004913
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004914- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4915 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4916 producing key-value pairs.
4917
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004918- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004919 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004920 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4921 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4922 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4923 previously went unchallenged.
4924
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004925New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004926-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004927
4928Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004929-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004930
4931Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004932-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004933
4934Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004935----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004936
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004937- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4938 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004939
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004940- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4941 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4942 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4943 home.
4944
4945
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004946What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004947===========================
4948
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004949*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4950
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004951Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004952--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004953
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004954- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4955 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004956
4957 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004958 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004959
4960 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4961 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004962 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004963 This needs to be documented.
4964
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004965- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4966 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4967
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004968- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4969 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4970 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4971
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004972- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4973 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4974
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004975- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4976 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4977 class forbids it).
4978
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004979- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4980 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4981 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4982
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004983- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4984
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004985Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004986-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004987
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004988- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4989 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004990 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004991
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004992- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4993 (like 1 + '').
4994
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004995Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004996-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004997
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004998- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4999 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
5000 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
5001 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005002 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005003 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
5004
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00005005- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
5006 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
5007 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
5008 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
5009
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005010- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
5011 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005012 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
5013 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
5014 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005015
5016- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
5017 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005018
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00005019- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
5020 bytes on its input.
5021
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005022Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005023-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005024
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005025- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00005026 convenience function.
5027
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005028- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
5029 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
5030 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005031 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
5032 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
5033 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
5034 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
5035 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
5036 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005037
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00005038- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
5039 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
5040 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
5041 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
5042
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00005043- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
5044 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
5045 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
5046
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005047- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
5048 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
5049 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
5050 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
5051
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005052- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
5053 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005054 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005055 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
5056 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
5057 new -l and -e options.
5058
5059- statcache is now deprecated.
5060
5061- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5062 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005063 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005064 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5065 time properly taken into account.
5066
5067- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5068 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5069 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5070 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5071
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005072Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005073-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005074
5075Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005076-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005077
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005078- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5079 is built with libdb3 if available.
5080
5081- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5082
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005083C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005084-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005085
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005086- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5087 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5088 PySequence_Size().
5089
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005090- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5091
5092- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5093 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5094 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5095
5096- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5097 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5098
5099- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5100 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5101
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005102New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005103-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005104
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005105- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5106 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5107
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005108- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5109 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5110
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005111- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5112
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005113Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005114-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005115
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005116- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5117 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5118
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005119Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005120-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005121
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005122Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005123----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005124
5125- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5126 removed completely in the next release.
5127
5128- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5129 OSX.
5130
5131- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5132 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5133
5134- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5135
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005136
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005137What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005138===========================
5139
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005140*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5141
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005142Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005143--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005144
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005145- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005146 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005147 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005148 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5149 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005150 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5151 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005152 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5153 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005154
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005155- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5156 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5157
5158- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5159 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5160
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005161Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005162-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005163
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005164- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5165 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5166 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5167 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5168 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5169 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5170 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5171 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5172
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005173- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5174 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5175 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5176 example).
5177
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005178- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005179 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005180 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005181 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005182
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005183- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5184 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5185 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005186 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005187
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005188- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5189 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5190 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5191 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5192 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5193 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5194
5195 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5196
5197 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5198
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005199Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005200-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005201
5202- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5203
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005204- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5205
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005206- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5207 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005208
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005209- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5210 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5211 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5212 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5213 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5214 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005215 attributes.
5216
5217- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5218 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5219 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005220
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005221- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5222 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5223 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005224
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005225- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5226 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5227 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005228 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5229 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5230
5231- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5232 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005233
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005234Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005235-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005236
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005237- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5238 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5239
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005240- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5241 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5242 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5243 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5244
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005245- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5246 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5247 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5248 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5249
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005250 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5251 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5252 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5253 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5254 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5255 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5256 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5257 without losing information).
5258
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005259- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005260 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5261 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5262 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5263 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5264 module).
5265
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005266 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005267 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5268 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5269 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5270 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005271
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005272- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005273 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5274 encoding.
5275
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005276- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5277 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5278
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005279- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005280 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5281
5282- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5283 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5284 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5285 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5286
5287- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5288
5289- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5290 ON, and OFF.
5291
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005292- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5293 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5294
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005295Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005296-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005297
5298- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5299 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5300 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005301
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005302- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5303 been added: -X and -E.
5304
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005305Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005306-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005307
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005308- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5309 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5310
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005311C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005312-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005313
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005314- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5315 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5316 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5317 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5318 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5319
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005320- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5321 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5322 as long) arguments.
5323
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005324- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5325 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5326 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5327 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5328 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5329 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5330
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005331- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5332 input.
5333
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005334New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005335-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005336
5337Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005338-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005339
5340Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005341-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005342
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005343- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5344 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5345 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5346
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005347- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5348 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5349 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005350 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005351
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005352 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5353 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5354 import signal
5355 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005356
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005357 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005358 while 1:
5359 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005360 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005361 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5362 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5363 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5364 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005365
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005366
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005367What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5368===========================
5369
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005370*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5371
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005372Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005373--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005374
5375- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5376 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5377 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5378
5379- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5380 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5381 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5382 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5383 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5384 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5385 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005386
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005387- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005388 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005389 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5390 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5391 associate a docstring with a property.
5392
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005393- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5394 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5395 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5396 other built-in object types.
5397
5398- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5399 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5400 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5401 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5402 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5403
5404- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5405 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5406
5407- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5408 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005409 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005410 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5411 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5412 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5413 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5414 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5415
5416- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5417 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5418 class.
5419
5420- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5421 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5422 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5423 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5424
5425- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5426 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5427 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5428 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5429
5430- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5431 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5432
5433- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5434 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5435 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5436 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5437 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005438 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005439 with the same value as s.
5440
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005441- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5442
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005443Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005444----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005445
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005446- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5447
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005448- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5449 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5450 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5451 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5452 objects.
5453
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005454- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5455 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005456 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5457 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5458
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005459- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5460 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5461 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5462
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005463Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005464-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005465
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005466- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5467 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5468 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5469 by the instances.
5470
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005471- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5472 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5473 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5474
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005475- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5476 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5477 before the entire comparison is complete.
5478
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005479- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5480 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5481 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5482
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005483- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5484 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5485 getwriter().
5486
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005487- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5488 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5489
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005490- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005491 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5492 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5493
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005494- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5495 iterable object.
5496
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005497- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5498 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005499
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005500- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5501 authentication.
5502
5503- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5504 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005505
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005506- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005507 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5508 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5509 a sample driver.)
5510
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005511Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005512-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005513
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005514- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5515 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5516 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5517 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5518 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5519 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5520 kernel has large file support.
5521
5522- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5523 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5524 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5525 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5526 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5527
5528- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5529 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5530 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5531
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005532C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005533-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005534
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005535- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5536 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5537
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005538New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005539-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005540
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005541- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5542 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5543
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005544Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005545-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005546
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005547- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5548 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5549 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5550 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5551 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5552
5553- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5554 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5555 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5556 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5557
5558- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5559 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5560
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005561Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005562-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005563
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005564- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005565 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5566 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005567
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005568
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005569What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5570===========================
5571
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005572*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5573
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005574Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005575----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005576
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005577- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5578 big to represent as a C double.
5579
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005580- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5581 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5582 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5583 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5584 restriction).
5585
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005586- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5587 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5588 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5589 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5590 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5591
5592 >>> dir([])
5593 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5594 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5595 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5596 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5597 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5598 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5599 'reverse', 'sort']
5600
5601 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5602
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005603- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005604 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5605 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5606 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5607 OverflowError exception.
5608
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005609- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005610 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005611 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5612 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5613 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5614 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5615 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005616 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005617 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5618 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5619
5620 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5621 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5622 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5623 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005624
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005625- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005626 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5627 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5628 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5629 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5630 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5631 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5632 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5633 once it is created.
5634
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005635- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5636 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5637 (key, value) pairs.
5638
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005639- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005640 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5641 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5642
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005643- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5644 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5645 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5646 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5647 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005648
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005649- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005650 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5651 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5652
5653 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5654
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005655- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005656 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5657
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005658Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005659-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005660
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005661- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005662 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5663 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005664
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005665- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5666 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5667 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5668 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5669 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5670 in this area anymore).
5671
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005672- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5673 threading.Timer.
5674
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005675- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5676 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5677
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005678- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005679 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5680
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005681- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005682 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5683 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5684 converted to Python longs.
5685
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005686- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005687 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5688
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005689- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5690 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5691 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5692
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005693Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005694-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005695
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005696- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5697 division operators as per PEP 238.
5698
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005699Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005700-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005701
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005702- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5703 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5704 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5705 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5706
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005707C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005708-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005709
5710- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005711
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005712- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5713 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005714 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005715
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005716 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5717 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005718 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005719 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005720
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005721- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005722 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5723 module:
5724
5725 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005726
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005727 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5728 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005729
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005730 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5731 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005732
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005733 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5734
5735 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5736
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005737- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005738 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5739 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5740 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005741
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005742New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005743-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005744
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005745- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5746 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5747 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5748 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5749 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005750
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005751Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005752-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005753
5754Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005755-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005756
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005757- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5758 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5759 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5760 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005761 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5762 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5763 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5764 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5765 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005766
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005767- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005768 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5769
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005770
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005771What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5772===========================
5773
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005774*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5775
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005776Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005777-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005778
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005779- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5780 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5781
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005782- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5783 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5784 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005785
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005786- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5787 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5788 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5789 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005790
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005791- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5792
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005793- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005794
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005795Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005796-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005797
5798- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005799 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005800 the module docstring for details.
5801
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005802Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005803-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005804
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005805- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005806 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5807 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5808 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005809
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005810- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5811 Nick Mathewson.
5812
5813Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005814----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005815
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005816- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5817 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5818 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5819 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5820 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5821 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5822 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5823 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5824
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005825- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5826 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5827 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5828 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5829
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005830- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5831 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5832 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5833 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5834 come a long way).
5835
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005836- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5837 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5838 write filters for these warnings).
5839
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005840- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5841 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5842 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5843 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5844 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5845
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005846- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5847 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5848 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5849 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5850 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5851 older distribution.
5852
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005853Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005854-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005855
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005856- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5857 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005858 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005859
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005860- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5861 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5862 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5863
5864- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5865
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005866- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5867
5868- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5869
5870- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5871
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005872- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005873
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005874- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5875
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005876New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005877-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005878
5879C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005880-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005881
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005882- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5883 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5884 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5885 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5886 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5887 against buffer overruns.
5888
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005889- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005890 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5891 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005892 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5893 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5894 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5895
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005896- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5897 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5898 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5899 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5900 deprecated.
5901
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005902Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005903-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005904
5905- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5906 relevant is found.
5907
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005908
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005909What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005910===========================
5911
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005912*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5913
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005914Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005915----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005916
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005917- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5918 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5919 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5920 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5921 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5922 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5923 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5924 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005925 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005926 repaired.
5927
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005928- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005929 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005930 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5931 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5932 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5933 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5934 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5935 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5936 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5937 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5938
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005939- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5940 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5941 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5942 leading BMO character).
5943
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005944- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5945 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5946 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5947
5948 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5949 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5950 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005951
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005952 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5953 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5954 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5955 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5956 for various simple to use conversions.
5957
5958 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5959 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5960
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005961 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5962 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5963 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5964 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5965 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5966 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5967 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5968 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5969 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5970 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5971 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5972 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5973 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5974 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5975 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005976
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005977- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5978 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5979 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005980 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005981 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005982
5983 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005984 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5985 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5986 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5987 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5988 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005989 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5990 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005991
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005992 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5993 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5994 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005995 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005996
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005997- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5998 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5999 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
6000 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
6001 floating arithmetic,
6002
6003 x = 9007199254740992.0
6004 print long(x)
6005
6006 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
6007 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
6008 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
6009 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
6010 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
6011 functions are of good quality).
6012
6013 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
6014 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
6015 algorithms to break.
6016
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00006017- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
6018 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
6019 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
6020 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
6021 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
6022 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
6023 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
6024 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
6025 order.
6026
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006027- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
6028 operation along the most common code paths.
6029
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006030- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
6031 the same as dict.has_key(x).
6032
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00006033- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
6034 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
6035 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
6036 {}.update(UserDict())
6037
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006038- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
6039 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
6040 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
6041 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
6042 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
6043 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
6044 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
6045 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
6046
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006047- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00006048 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006049
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006050 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00006051 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
6052 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00006053 join() method of strings
6054 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006055 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
6056 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006057 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006058 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006059
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006060- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6061 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6062
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006063- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6064 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6065
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006066- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6067 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6068 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6069 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6070
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006071- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6072 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006073 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006074 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6075 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006076
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006077- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6078
6079
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006080Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006081-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006082
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006083- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006084 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006085 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6086 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6087
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006088- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6089 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6090
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006091- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6092 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6093 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6094 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6095
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006096- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6097 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6098 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6099
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006100- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6101
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006102- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6103
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006104- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6105 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6106 that are still imported into string.py).
6107
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006108- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6109
6110- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6111 Now it does.
6112
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006113- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6114
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006115- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6116 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6117 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6118 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6119 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006120 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6121 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006122
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006123- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6124 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6125 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6126 'help(object)'.
6127
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006128Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006129-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006130
6131- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006132 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006133 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6134 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6135
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006136- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006137 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6138 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006139
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006140C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006141-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006142
6143- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6144 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006145
6146----
6147
6148**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**