| What's new in this release? |
| =========================== |
| |
| Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.5.1. Older |
| changes are in the file HISTORY. The most recent changes are listed |
| first. |
| |
| A note on attributions: while I have sprinkled some names throughout |
| here, I'm grateful to many more people who remain unnamed. You may |
| find your name in the ACKS file. If you believe you deserve more |
| credit, let me know and I'll add you to the list! |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.5.2b1 to 1.5.2b2 |
| ======================= |
| |
| General |
| ------- |
| |
| - Many memory leaks fixed. |
| |
| - Many small bugs fixed. |
| |
| - Command line option -OO (or -O -O) suppresses inclusion of doc |
| strings in resulting bytecode. |
| |
| Windows-specific changes |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| - New built-in module winsound provides an interface to the Win32 |
| PlaySound() call. |
| |
| - Re-enable the audioop module in the config.c file. |
| |
| - On Windows, support spawnv() and associated P_* symbols. |
| |
| - Fixed the conversion of times() return values on Windows. |
| |
| - Removed freeze from the installer -- it doesn't work without the |
| source tree. (See FAQ 8.11.) |
| |
| - On Windows 95/98, the Tkinter module now is smart enough to find |
| Tcl/Tk even when the PATH environment variable hasn't been set -- when |
| the import of _tkinter fails, it searches in a standard locations, |
| patches os.environ["PATH"], and tries again. When it still fails, a |
| clearer error message is produced. This should avoid most |
| installation problems with Tkinter use (e.g. in IDLE). |
| |
| - The -i option doesn't make any calls to set[v]buf() for stdin -- |
| this apparently screwed up _kbhit() and the _tkinter main loop. |
| |
| - The ntpath module (and hence, os.path on Windows) now parses out UNC |
| paths (e.g. \\host\mountpoint\dir\file) as "drive letters", so that |
| splitdrive() will \\host\mountpoint as the drive and \dir\file as the |
| path. ** EXPERIMENTAL ** |
| |
| - Added a hack to the exit code so that if (1) the exit status is |
| nonzero and (2) we think we have our own DOS box (i.e. we're not |
| started from a command line shell), we print a message and wait for |
| the user to hit a key before the DOS box is closed. |
| |
| - Updated the installer to WISE 5.0g. Added a dialog warning about |
| the imminent Tcl installation. Added a dialog to specify the program |
| group name in the start menu. Upgraded the Tcl installer to Tcl |
| 8.0.4. |
| |
| Changes to intrinsics |
| --------------------- |
| |
| - The repr() or str() of a module object now shows the __file__ |
| attribute (i.e., the file which it was loaded), or the string |
| "(built-in)" if there is no __file__ attribute. |
| |
| - The range() function now avoids overflow during its calculations (if |
| at all possible). |
| |
| - New info string sys.hexversion, which is an integer encoding the |
| version in hexadecimal. In other words, hex(sys.hexversion) == |
| 0x010502b2 for Python 1.5.2b2. |
| |
| New or improved ports |
| --------------------- |
| |
| - Support for Nextstep descendants (future Mac systems). |
| |
| - Improved BeOS support. |
| |
| - Support dynamic loading of shared libraries on NetBSD platforms that |
| use ELF (i.e., MIPS and Alpha systems). |
| |
| Configuration/build changes |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| - The Lib/test directory is no longer included in the default module |
| search path (sys.path) -- "test" has been a package ever since 1.5. |
| |
| - Now using autoconf 2.13. |
| |
| New library modules |
| ------------------- |
| |
| - New library modules asyncore and asynchat: these form Sam Rushing's |
| famous asynchronous socket library. Sam has gracefully allowed me to |
| incorporate these in the standard Python library. |
| |
| - New module statvfs contains indexing constants for [f]statvfs() |
| return tuple. |
| |
| Changes to the library |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| - The wave module (platform-independent support for Windows sound |
| files) has been fixed to actually make it work. |
| |
| - The sunau module (platform-independent support for Sun/NeXT sound |
| files) has been fixed to work across platforms. Also, a weird |
| encoding bug in the header of the audio test data file has been |
| corrected. |
| |
| - Fix a bug in the urllib module that occasionally tripped up |
| webchecker and other ftp retrieves. |
| |
| - ConfigParser's get() method now accepts an optional keyword argument |
| (vars) that is substituted on top of the defaults that were setup in |
| __init__. You can now also have recusive references in your |
| configuration file. |
| |
| - Some improvements to the Queue module, including a put_nowait() |
| module and an optional "block" second argument, to get() and put(), |
| defaulting to 1. |
| |
| - The updated xmllib module is once again compatible with the version |
| present in Python 1.5.1 (this was accidentally broken in 1.5.2b1). |
| |
| - The bdb module (base class for the debugger) now supports |
| canonicalizing pathnames used in breakpoints. The derived class must |
| override the new canonical() method for this to work. Also changed |
| clear_break() to the backwards compatible old signature, and added |
| clear_bpbynumber() for the new functionality. |
| |
| - In sgmllib (and hence htmllib), recognize attributes even if they |
| don't have space in front of them. I.e. '<a |
| name="foo"href="bar.html">' will now have two attributes recognized. |
| |
| - In the debugger (pdb), change clear syntax to support three |
| alternatives: clear; clear file:line; clear bpno bpno ... |
| |
| - The os.path module now pretends to be a submodule within the os |
| "package", so you can do things like "from os.path import exists". |
| |
| - The standard exceptions now have doc strings. |
| |
| - In the smtplib module, exceptions are now classes. Also avoid |
| inserting a non-standard space after "TO" in rcpt() command. |
| |
| - The rfc822 module's getaddrlist() method now uses all occurrences of |
| the specified header instead of just the first. Some other bugfixes |
| too (to handle more weird addresses found in a very large test set, |
| and to avoid crashes on certain invalid dates), and a small test |
| module has been added. |
| |
| - Fixed bug in urlparse in the common-case code for HTTP URLs; it |
| would lose the query, fragment, and/or parameter information. |
| |
| - The sndhdr module no longer supports whatraw() -- it depended on a |
| rare extenral program. |
| |
| - The UserList module/class now supports the extend() method, like |
| real list objects. |
| |
| - The uu module now deals better with trailing garbage generated by |
| some broke uuencoders. |
| |
| - The telnet module now has an my_interact() method which uses threads |
| instead of select. The interact() method uses this by default on |
| Windows (where the single-threaded version doesn't work). |
| |
| - Add a class to mailbox.py for dealing with qmail directory |
| mailboxes. The test code was extended to notice these being used as |
| well. |
| |
| Changes to extension modules |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| - Support for the [f]statvfs() system call, where it exists. |
| |
| - Fixed some bugs in cPickle where bad input could cause it to dump |
| core. |
| |
| - Fixed cStringIO to make the writelines() function actually work. |
| |
| - Added strop.expandtabs() so string.expandtabs() is now much faster. |
| |
| - Added fsync() and fdatasync(), if they appear to exist. |
| |
| - Support for "long files" (64-bit seek pointers). |
| |
| - Fixed a bug in the zlib module's flush() function. |
| |
| - Added access() system call. It returns 1 if access granted, 0 if |
| not. |
| |
| - The curses module implements an optional nlines argument to |
| w.scroll(). (It then calls wscrl(win, nlines) instead of scoll(win).) |
| |
| Changes to tools |
| ---------------- |
| |
| - Some changes to IDLE; see Tools/idle/NEWS.txt. |
| |
| - Latest version of Misc/python-mode.el included. |
| |
| Changes to Tkinter |
| ------------------ |
| |
| - Avoid tracebacks when an image is deleted after its root has been |
| destroyed. |
| |
| Changes to the Python/C API |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| - When parentheses are used in a PyArg_Parse[Tuple]() call, any |
| sequence is now accepted, instead of requiring a tuple. This is in |
| line with the general trend towards accepting arbitrary sequences. |
| |
| - Added PyModule_GetFilename(). |
| |
| - In PyNumber_Power(), remove unneeded and even harmful test for float |
| to the negative power (which is already and better done in |
| floatobject.c). |
| |
| - New version identification symbols; read patchlevel.h for info. The |
| version numbers are now exported by Python.h. |
| |
| - Rolled back the API version change -- it's back to 1007! |
| |
| - The frozenmain.c function calls PyInitFrozenExtensions(). |
| |
| - Added 'N' format character to Py_BuildValue -- like 'O' but doesn't |
| INCREF. |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.5.2a2 to 1.5.2b1 |
| ======================= |
| |
| Changes to intrinsics |
| --------------------- |
| |
| - New extension NotImplementedError, derived from RuntimeError. Not |
| used, but recommended use is for "abstract" methods to raise this. |
| |
| - The parser will now spit out a warning or error when -t or -tt is |
| used for parser input coming from a string, too. |
| |
| - The code generator now inserts extra SET_LINENO opcodes when |
| compiling multi-line argument lists. |
| |
| - When comparing bound methods, use identity test on the objects, not |
| equality test. |
| |
| New or improved ports |
| --------------------- |
| |
| - Chris Herborth has redone his BeOS port; it now works on PowerPC |
| (R3/R4) and x86 (R4 only). Threads work too in this port. |
| |
| Renaming |
| -------- |
| |
| - Thanks to Chris Herborth, the thread primitives now have proper Py* |
| names in the source code (they already had those for the linker, |
| through some smart macros; but the source still had the old, un-Py |
| names). |
| |
| Configuration/build changes |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| - Improved support for FreeBSD/3. |
| |
| - Check for pthread_detach instead of pthread_create in libc. |
| |
| - The makesetup script now searches EXECINCLUDEPY before INCLUDEPY. |
| |
| - Misc/Makefile.pre.in now also looks at Setup.thread and Setup.local. |
| Otherwise modules such as thread didn't get incorporated in extensions. |
| |
| New library modules |
| ------------------- |
| |
| - shlex.py by Eric Raymond provides a lexical analyzer class for |
| simple shell-like syntaxes. |
| |
| - netrc.py by Eric Raymond provides a parser for .netrc files. (The |
| undocumented Netrc class in ftplib.py is now obsolete.) |
| |
| - codeop.py is a new module that contains the compile_command() |
| function that was previously in code.py. This is so that JPython can |
| provide its own version of this function, while still sharing the |
| higher-level classes in code.py. |
| |
| - turtle.py is a new module for simple turtle graphics. I'm still |
| working on it; let me know if you use this to teach Python to children |
| or other novices without prior programming experience. |
| |
| Obsoleted library modules |
| ------------------------- |
| |
| - poly.py and zmod.py have been moved to Lib/lib-old to emphasize |
| their status of obsoleteness. They don't do a particularly good job |
| and don't seem particularly relevant to the Python core. |
| |
| New tools |
| --------- |
| |
| - I've added IDLE: my Integrated DeveLopment Environment for Python. |
| Requires Tcl/Tk (and Tkinter). Works on Windows and Unix (and should |
| work on Macintosh, but I haven't been able to test it there; it does |
| depend on new features in 1.5.2 and perhaps even new features in |
| 1.5.2b1, especially the new code module). This is very much a work in |
| progress. I'd like to hear how people like it compared to PTUI (or |
| any other IDE they are familiar with). |
| |
| - New tools by Barry Warsaw: |
| |
| = audiopy: controls the Solaris Audio device |
| = pynche: The PYthonically Natural Color and Hue Editor |
| = world: Print mappings between country names and DNS country codes |
| |
| New demos |
| --------- |
| |
| - Demo/scripts/beer.py prints the lyrics to an arithmetic drinking |
| song. |
| |
| - Demo/tkinter/guido/optionmenu.py shows how to do an option menu in |
| Tkinter. (By Fredrik Lundh -- not by me!) |
| |
| Changes to the library |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| - compileall.py now avoids recompiling .py files that haven't changed; |
| it adds a -f option to force recompilation. |
| |
| - New version of xmllib.py by Sjoerd Mullender (0.2 with latest |
| patches). |
| |
| - nntplib.py: statparse() no longer lowercases the message-id. |
| |
| - types.py: use type(__stdin__) for FileType. |
| |
| - urllib.py: fix translations for filenames with "funny" characters. |
| Patch by Sjoerd Mullender. Note that if you subclass one of the |
| URLopener classes, and you have copied code from the old urllib.py, |
| your subclass may stop working. A long-term solution is to provide |
| more methods so that you don't have to copy code. |
| |
| - cgi.py: In read_multi, allow a subclass to override the class we |
| instantiate when we create a recursive instance, by setting the class |
| variable 'FieldStorageClass' to the desired class. By default, this |
| is set to None, in which case we use self.__class__ (as before). |
| Also, a patch by Jim Fulton to pass additional arguments to recursive |
| calls to the FieldStorage constructor from its read_multi method. |
| |
| - UserList.py: In __getslice__, use self.__class__ instead of |
| UserList. |
| |
| - In SimpleHTTPServer.py, the server specified in test() should be |
| BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer, in case the request handler should want to |
| reference the two attributes added by BaseHTTPServer.server_bind. (By |
| Jeff Rush, for Bobo). Also open the file in binary mode, so serving |
| images from a Windows box might actually work. |
| |
| - In CGIHTTPServer.py, the list of acceptable formats is -split- |
| on spaces but -joined- on commas, resulting in double commas |
| in the joined text. (By Jeff Rush.) |
| |
| - SocketServer.py, patch by Jeff Bauer: a minor change to declare two |
| new threaded versions of Unix Server classes, using the ThreadingMixIn |
| class: ThreadingUnixStreamServer, ThreadingUnixDatagramServer. |
| |
| - bdb.py: fix bomb on deleting a temporary breakpoint: there's no |
| method do_delete(); do_clear() was meant. By Greg Ward. |
| |
| - getopt.py: accept a non-list sequence for the long options (request |
| by Jack Jansen). Because it might be a common mistake to pass a |
| single string, this situation is treated separately. Also added |
| docstrings (copied from the library manual) and removed the (now |
| redundant) module comments. |
| |
| - tempfile.py: improvements to avoid security leaks. |
| |
| - code.py: moved compile_command() to new module codeop.py. |
| |
| - pickle.py: support pickle format 1.3 (binary float added). By Jim |
| Fulton. Also get rid of the undocumented obsolete Pickler dump_special |
| method. |
| |
| - uu.py: Move 'import sys' to top of module, as noted by Tim Peters. |
| |
| - imaplib.py: fix problem with some versions of IMAP4 servers that |
| choose to mix the case in their CAPABILITIES response. |
| |
| - cmp.py: use (f1, f2) as cache key instead of f1 + ' ' + f2. Noted |
| by Fredrik Lundh. |
| |
| Changes to extension modules |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| - More doc strings for several modules were contributed by Chris |
| Petrilli: math, cmath, fcntl. |
| |
| - Fixed a bug in zlibmodule.c that could cause core dumps on |
| decompression of rarely occurring input. |
| |
| - cPickle.c: new version from Jim Fulton, with Open Source copyright |
| notice. Also, initialize self->safe_constructors early on to prevent |
| crash in early dealloc. |
| |
| - cStringIO.c: new version from Jim Fulton, with Open Source copyright |
| notice. Also fixed a core dump in cStringIO.c when doing seeks. |
| |
| - mpzmodule.c: fix signed character usage in mpz.mpz(stringobjecty). |
| |
| - readline.c: Bernard Herzog pointed out that rl_parse_and_bind |
| modifies its argument string (bad function!), so we make a temporary |
| copy. |
| |
| - sunaudiodev.c: Barry Warsaw added more smarts to get the device and |
| control pseudo-device, per audio(7I). |
| |
| Changes to tools |
| ---------------- |
| |
| - New, improved version of Barry Warsaw's Misc/python-mode.el (editing |
| support for Emacs). |
| |
| - tabnanny.py: added a -q ('quiet') option to tabnanny, which causes |
| only the names of offending files to be printed. |
| |
| - freeze: when printing missing modules, also print the module they |
| were imported from. |
| |
| - untabify.py: patch by Detlef Lannert to implement -t option |
| (set tab size). |
| |
| Changes to Tkinter |
| ------------------ |
| |
| - grid_bbox(): support new Tk API: grid bbox ?column row? ?column2 |
| row2? |
| |
| - _tkinter.c: RajGopal Srinivasan noted that the latest code (1.5.2a2) |
| doesn't work when running in a non-threaded environment. He added |
| some #ifdefs that fix this. |
| |
| Changes to the Python/C API |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| - Bumped API version number to 1008 -- enough things have changed! |
| |
| - There's a new macro, PyThreadState_GET(), which does the same work |
| as PyThreadState_Get() without the overhead of a function call (it |
| also avoids the error check). The two top calling locations of |
| PyThreadState_Get() have been changed to use this macro. |
| |
| - All symbols intended for export from a DLL or shared library are now |
| marked as such (with the DL_IMPORT() macro) in the header file that |
| declares them. This was needed for the BeOS port, and should also |
| make some other ports easier. The PC port no longer needs the file |
| with exported symbols (PC/python_nt.def). There's also a DL_EXPORT |
| macro which is only used for init methods in extension modules, and |
| for Py_Main(). |
| |
| Invisible changes to internals |
| ------------------------------ |
| |
| - Fixed a bug in new_buffersize() in fileobject.c which could |
| return a buffer size that was way too large. |
| |
| - Use PySys_WriteStderr instead of fprintf in most places. |
| |
| - dictobject.c: remove dead code discovered by Vladimir Marangozov. |
| |
| - tupleobject.c: make tuples less hungry -- an extra item was |
| allocated but never used. Tip by Vladimir Marangozov. |
| |
| - mymath.h: Metrowerks PRO4 finally fixes the hypot snafu. (Jack |
| Jansen) |
| |
| - import.c: Jim Fulton fixes a reference count bug in |
| PyEval_GetGlobals. |
| |
| - glmodule.c: check in the changed version after running the stubber |
| again -- this solves the conflict with curses over the 'clear' entry |
| point much nicer. (Jack Jansen had checked in the changes to cstubs |
| eons ago, but I never regenrated glmodule.c :-( ) |
| |
| - frameobject.c: fix reference count bug in PyFrame_New. Vladimir |
| Marangozov. |
| |
| - stropmodule.c: add a missing DECREF in an error exit. Submitted by |
| Jonathan Giddy. |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.5.2a1 to 1.5.2a2 |
| ======================= |
| |
| General |
| ------- |
| |
| - It is now a syntax error to have a function argument without a |
| default following one with a default. |
| |
| - __file__ is now set to the .py file if it was parsed (it used to |
| always be the .pyc/.pyo file). |
| |
| - Don't exit with a fatal error during initialization when there's a |
| problem with the exceptions.py module. |
| |
| - New environment variable PYTHONOPTIMIZE can be used to set -O. |
| |
| - New version of python-mode.el for Emacs. |
| |
| Miscellaneous fixed bugs |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| - No longer print the (confusing) error message about stack underflow |
| while compiling. |
| |
| - Some threading and locking bugs fixed. |
| |
| - When errno is zero, report "Error", not "Success". |
| |
| Documentation |
| ------------- |
| |
| - Documentation will be released separately. |
| |
| - Doc strings added to array and md5 modules by Chris Petrilli. |
| |
| Ports and build procedure |
| ------------------------- |
| |
| - Stop installing when a move or copy fails. |
| |
| - New version of the OS/2 port code by Jeff Rush. |
| |
| - The makesetup script handles absolute filenames better. |
| |
| - The 'new' module is now enabled by default in the Setup file. |
| |
| - I *think* I've solved the problem with the Linux build blowing up |
| sometimes due to a conflict between sigcheck/intrcheck and |
| signalmodule. |
| |
| Built-in functions |
| ------------------ |
| |
| - The second argument to apply() can now be any sequence, not just a |
| tuple. |
| |
| Built-in types |
| -------------- |
| |
| - Lists have a new method: L1.extend(L2) is equivalent to the common |
| idiom L1[len(L1):] = L2. |
| |
| - Better error messages when a sequence is indexed with a non-integer. |
| |
| - Bettter error message when calling a non-callable object (include |
| the type in the message). |
| |
| Python services |
| --------------- |
| |
| - New version of cPickle.c fixes some bugs. |
| |
| - pickle.py: improved instantiation error handling. |
| |
| - code.py: reworked quite a bit. New base class |
| InteractiveInterpreter and derived class InteractiveConsole. Fixed |
| several problems in compile_command(). |
| |
| - py_compile.py: print error message and continue on syntax errors. |
| Also fixed an old bug with the fstat code (it was never used). |
| |
| - pyclbr.py: support submodules of packages. |
| |
| String Services |
| --------------- |
| |
| - StringIO.py: raise the right exception (ValueError) for attempted |
| I/O on closed StringIO objects. |
| |
| - re.py: fixed a bug in subn(), which caused .groups() to fail inside |
| the replacement function called by sub(). |
| |
| - The struct module has a new format 'P': void * in native mode. |
| |
| Generic OS Services |
| ------------------- |
| |
| - Module time: Y2K robustness. 2-digit year acceptance depends on |
| value of time.accept2dyear, initialized from env var PYTHONY2K, |
| default 0. Years 00-68 mean 2000-2068, while 69-99 mean 1969-1999 |
| (POSIX or X/Open recommendation). |
| |
| - os.path: normpath(".//x") should return "x", not "/x". |
| |
| - getpass.py: fall back on default_getpass() when sys.stdin.fileno() |
| doesn't work. |
| |
| - tempfile.py: regenerate the template after a fork() call. |
| |
| Optional OS Services |
| -------------------- |
| |
| - In the signal module, disable restarting interrupted system calls |
| when we have siginterrupt(). |
| |
| Debugger |
| -------- |
| |
| - No longer set __args__; this feature is no longer supported and can |
| affect the debugged code. |
| |
| - cmd.py, pdb.py and bdb.py have been overhauled by Richard Wolff, who |
| added aliases and some other useful new features, e.g. much better |
| breakpoint support: temporary breakpoint, disabled breakpoints, |
| breakpoints with ignore counts, and conditions; breakpoints can be set |
| on a file before it is loaded. |
| |
| Profiler |
| -------- |
| |
| - Changes so that JPython can use it. Also fix the calibration code |
| so it actually works again |
| . |
| Internet Protocols and Support |
| ------------------------------ |
| |
| - imaplib.py: new version from Piers Lauder. |
| |
| - smtplib.py: change sendmail() method to accept a single string or a |
| list or strings as the destination (commom newbie mistake). |
| |
| - poplib.py: LIST with a msg argument fixed. |
| |
| - urlparse.py: some optimizations for common case (http). |
| |
| - urllib.py: support content-length in info() for ftp protocol; |
| support for a progress meter through a third argument to |
| urlretrieve(); commented out gopher test (the test site is dead). |
| |
| Internet Data handling |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| - sgmllib.py: support tags with - or . in their name. |
| |
| - mimetypes.py: guess_type() understands 'data' URLs. |
| |
| Restricted Execution |
| -------------------- |
| |
| - The classes rexec.RModuleLoader and rexec.RModuleImporter no |
| longer exist. |
| |
| Tkinter |
| ------- |
| |
| - When reporting an exception, store its info in sys.last_*. Also, |
| write all of it to stderr. |
| |
| - Added NS, EW, and NSEW constants, for grid's sticky option. |
| |
| - Fixed last-minute bug in 1.5.2a1 release: need to include "mytime.h". |
| |
| - Make bind variants without a sequence return a tuple of sequences |
| (formerly it returned a string, which wasn't very convenient). |
| |
| - Add image commands to the Text widget (these are new in Tk 8.0). |
| |
| - Added new listbox and canvas methods: {xview,yview}_{scroll,moveto}.) |
| |
| - Improved the thread code (but you still can't call update() from |
| another thread on Windows). |
| |
| - Fixed unnecessary references to _default_root in the new dialog |
| modules. |
| |
| - Miscellaneous problems fixed. |
| |
| |
| Windows General |
| --------------- |
| |
| - Call LoadLibraryEx(..., ..., LOAD_WITH_ALTERED_SEARCH_PATH) to |
| search for dependent dlls in the directory containing the .pyd. |
| |
| - In debugging mode, call DebugBreak() in Py_FatalError(). |
| |
| Windows Installer |
| ----------------- |
| |
| - Install zlib.dll in the DLLs directory instead of in the win32 |
| system directory, to avoid conflicts with other applications that have |
| their own zlib.dll. |
| |
| Test Suite |
| ---------- |
| |
| - test_long.py: new test for long integers, by Tim Peters. |
| |
| - regrtest.py: improved so it can be used for other test suites as |
| well. |
| |
| - test_strftime.py: use re to compare test results, to support legal |
| variants (e.g. on Linux). |
| |
| Tools and Demos |
| --------------- |
| |
| - Four new scripts in Tools/scripts: crlf.py and lfcr.py (to |
| remove/add Windows style '\r\n' line endings), untabify.py (to remove |
| tabs), and rgrep.yp (reverse grep). |
| |
| - Improvements to Tools/freeze/. Each Python module is now written to |
| its own C file. This prevents some compilers or assemblers from |
| blowing up on large frozen programs, and saves recompilation time if |
| only a few modules are changed. Other changes too, e.g. new command |
| line options -x and -i. |
| |
| - Much improved (and smaller!) version of Tools/scripts/mailerdaemon.py. |
| |
| Python/C API |
| ------------ |
| |
| - New mechanism to support extensions of the type object while |
| remaining backward compatible with extensions compiled for previous |
| versions of Python 1.5. A flags field indicates presence of certain |
| fields. |
| |
| - Addition to the buffer API to differentiate access to bytes and |
| 8-bit characters (in anticipation of Unicode characters). |
| |
| - New argument parsing format t# ("text") to indicate 8-bit |
| characters; s# simply means 8-bit bytes, for backwards compatibility. |
| |
| - New object type, bufferobject.c is an example and can be used to |
| create buffers from memory. |
| |
| - Some support for 64-bit longs, including some MS platforms. |
| |
| - Many calls to fprintf(stderr, ...) have been replaced with calls to |
| PySys_WriteStderr(...). |
| |
| - The calling context for PyOS_Readline() has changed: it must now be |
| called with the interpreter lock held! It releases the lock around |
| the call to the function pointed to by PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer |
| (default PyOS_StdioReadline()). |
| |
| - New APIs PyLong_FromVoidPtr() and PyLong_AsVoidPtr(). |
| |
| - Renamed header file "thread.h" to "pythread.h". |
| |
| - The code string of code objects may now be anything that supports the |
| buffer API. |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.5.1 to 1.5.2a1 |
| ===================== |
| |
| General |
| ------- |
| |
| - When searching for the library, a landmark that is a compiled module |
| (string.pyc or string.pyo) is also accepted. |
| |
| - When following symbolic links to the python executable, use a loop |
| so that a symlink to a symlink can work. |
| |
| - Added a hack so that when you type 'quit' or 'exit' at the |
| interpreter, you get a friendly explanation of how to press Ctrl-D (or |
| Ctrl-Z) to exit. |
| |
| - New and improved Misc/python-mode.el (Python mode for Emacs). |
| |
| - Revert a new feature in Unix dynamic loading: for one or two |
| revisions, modules were loaded using the RTLD_GLOBAL flag. It turned |
| out to be a bad idea. |
| |
| Miscellaneous fixed bugs |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| - All patches on the patch page have been integrated. (But much more |
| has been done!) |
| |
| - Several memory leaks plugged (e.g. the one for classes with a |
| __getattr__ method). |
| |
| - Removed the only use of calloc(). This triggered an obscure bug on |
| multiprocessor Sparc Solaris 2.6. |
| |
| - Fix a peculiar bug that would allow "import sys.time" to succeed |
| (believing the built-in time module to be a part of the sys package). |
| |
| - Fix a bug in the overflow checking when converting a Python long to |
| a C long (failed to convert -2147483648L, and some other cases). |
| |
| Documentation |
| ------------- |
| |
| - Doc strings have been added to many extension modules: __builtin__, |
| errno, select, signal, socket, sys, thread, time. Also to methods of |
| list objects (try [].append.__doc__). A doc string on a type will now |
| automatically be propagated to an instance if the instance has methods |
| that are accessed in the usual way. |
| |
| - The documentation has been expanded and the formatting improved. |
| (Remember that the documentation is now unbundled and has its own |
| release cycle though; see http://www.python.org/doc/.) |
| |
| - Added Misc/Porting -- a mini-FAQ on porting to a new platform. |
| |
| Ports and build procedure |
| ------------------------- |
| |
| - The BeOS port is now integrated. Courtesy Chris Herborth. |
| |
| - Symbol files for FreeBSD 2.x and 3.x have been contributed |
| (Lib/plat-freebsd[23]/*). |
| |
| - Support HPUX 10.20 DCE threads. |
| |
| - Finally fixed the configure script so that (on SGI) if -OPT:Olimit=0 |
| works, it won't also use -Olimit 1500 (which gives a warning for every |
| file). Also support the SGI_ABI environment variable better. |
| |
| - The makesetup script now understands absolute pathnames ending in .o |
| in the module -- it assumes it's a file for which we have no source. |
| |
| - Other miscellaneous improvements to the configure script and |
| Makefiles. |
| |
| - The test suite now uses a different sound sample. |
| |
| Built-in functions |
| ------------------ |
| |
| - Better checks for invalid input to int(), long(), string.atoi(), |
| string.atol(). (Formerly, a sign without digits would be accepted as |
| a legal ways to spell zero.) |
| |
| - Changes to map() and filter() to use the length of a sequence only |
| as a hint -- if an IndexError happens earlier, take that. (Formerly, |
| this was considered an error.) |
| |
| - Experimental feature in getattr(): a third argument can specify a |
| default (instead of raising AttributeError). |
| |
| - Implement round() slightly different, so that for negative ndigits |
| no additional errors happen in the last step. |
| |
| - The open() function now adds the filename to the exception when it |
| fails. |
| |
| Built-in exceptions |
| ------------------- |
| |
| - New standard exceptions EnvironmentError and PosixError. |
| EnvironmentError is the base class for IOError and PosixError; |
| PosixError is the same as os.error. All this so that either exception |
| class can be instantiated with a third argument indicating a filename. |
| The built-in function open() and most os/posix functions that take a |
| filename argument now use this. |
| |
| Built-in types |
| -------------- |
| |
| - List objects now have an experimental pop() method; l.pop() returns |
| and removes the last item; l.pop(i) returns and removes the item at |
| i. Also, the sort() method is faster again. Sorting is now also |
| safer: it is impossible for the sorting function to modify the list |
| while the sort is going on (which could cause core dumps). |
| |
| - Changes to comparisons: numbers are now smaller than any other type. |
| This is done to prevent the circularity where [] < 0L < 1 < [] is |
| true. As a side effect, cmp(None, 0) is now positive instead of |
| negative. This *shouldn't* affect any working code, but I've found |
| that the change caused several "sleeping" bugs to become active, so |
| beware! |
| |
| - Instance methods may now have other callable objects than just |
| Python functions as their im_func. Use new.instancemethod() or write |
| your own C code to create them; new.instancemethod() may be called |
| with None for the instance to create an unbound method. |
| |
| - Assignment to __name__, __dict__ or __bases__ of a class object is |
| now allowed (with stringent type checks); also allow assignment to |
| __getattr__ etc. The cached values for __getattr__ etc. are |
| recomputed after such assignments (but not for derived classes :-( ). |
| |
| - Allow assignment to some attributes of function objects: func_code, |
| func_defaults and func_doc / __doc__. (With type checks except for |
| __doc__ / func_doc .) |
| |
| Python services |
| --------------- |
| |
| - New tests (in Lib/test): reperf.py (regular expression benchmark), |
| sortperf.py (list sorting benchmark), test_MimeWriter.py (test case |
| for the MimeWriter module). |
| |
| - Generalized test/regrtest.py so that it is useful for testing other |
| packages. |
| |
| - The ihooks.py module now understands package imports. |
| |
| - In code.py, add a class that subsumes Fredrik Lundh's |
| PythonInterpreter class. The interact() function now uses this. |
| |
| - In rlcompleter.py, in completer(), return None instead of raising an |
| IndexError when there are no more completions left. |
| |
| - Fixed the marshal module to test for certain common kinds of invalid |
| input. (It's still not foolproof!) |
| |
| - In the operator module, add an alias (now the preferred name) |
| "contains" for "sequenceincludes". |
| |
| String Services |
| --------------- |
| |
| - In the string and strop modules, in the replace() function, treat an |
| empty pattern as an error (since it's not clear what was meant!). |
| |
| - Some speedups to re.py, especially the string substitution and split |
| functions. Also added new function/method findall(), to find all |
| occurrences of a given substring. |
| |
| - In cStringIO, add better argument type checking and support the |
| readonly 'closed' attribute (like regular files). |
| |
| - In the struct module, unsigned 1-2 byte sized formats no longer |
| result in long integer values. |
| |
| Miscellaneous services |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| - In whrandom.py, added new method and function randrange(), same as |
| choice(range(start, stop, step)) but faster. This addresses the |
| problem that randint() was accidentally defined as taking an inclusive |
| range. Also, randint(a, b) is now redefined as randrange(a, b+1), |
| adding extra range and type checking to its arguments! |
| |
| - Add some semi-thread-safety to random.gauss() (it used to be able to |
| crash when invoked from separate threads; now the worst it can do is |
| give a duplicate result occasionally). |
| |
| - Some restructuring and generalization done to cmd.py. |
| |
| - Major upgrade to ConfigParser.py; converted to using 're', added new |
| exceptions, support underscore in section header and option name. No |
| longer add 'name' option to every section; instead, add '__name__'. |
| |
| - In getpass.py, don't use raw_input() to ask for the password -- we |
| don't want it to show up in the readline history! Also don't catch |
| interrupts (the try-finally already does all necessary cleanup). |
| |
| Generic OS Services |
| ------------------- |
| |
| - New functions in os.py: makedirs(), removedirs(), renames(). New |
| variable: linesep (the line separator as found in binary files, |
| i.e. '\n' on Unix, '\r\n' on DOS/Windows, '\r' on Mac. Do *not* use |
| this with files opened in (default) text mode; the line separator used |
| will always be '\n'! |
| |
| - Changes to the 'os.path' submodule of os.py: added getsize(), |
| getmtime(), getatime() -- these fetch the most popular items from the |
| stat return tuple. |
| |
| - In the time module, add strptime(), if it exists. (This parses a |
| time according to a format -- the inverse of strftime().) Also, |
| remove the call to mktime() from strftime() -- it messed up the |
| formatting of some non-local times. |
| |
| - In the socket module, added a new function gethostbyname_ex(). |
| Also, don't use #ifdef to test for some symbols that are enums on some |
| platforms (and should exist everywhere). |
| |
| Optional OS Services |
| -------------------- |
| |
| - Some fixes to gzip.py. In particular, the readlines() method now |
| returns the lines *with* trailing newline characters, like readlines() |
| of regular file objects. Also, it didn't work together with cPickle; |
| fixed that. |
| |
| - In whichdb.py, support byte-swapped dbhash (bsddb) files. |
| |
| - In anydbm.py, look at the type of an existing database to determine |
| which module to use to open it. (The anydbm.error exception is now a |
| tuple.) |
| |
| Unix Services |
| ------------- |
| |
| - In the termios module, in tcsetattr(), initialize the structure vy |
| calling tcgetattr(). |
| |
| - Added some of the "wait status inspection" macros as functions to |
| the posix module (and thus to the os module): WEXITSTATUS(), |
| WIFEXITED(), WIFSIGNALED(), WIFSTOPPED(), WSTOPSIG(), WTERMSIG(). |
| |
| - In the syslog module, make the default facility more intuitive |
| (matching the docs). |
| |
| Debugger |
| -------- |
| |
| - In pdb.py, support for setting breaks on files/modules that haven't |
| been loaded yet. |
| |
| Internet Protocols and Support |
| ------------------------------ |
| |
| - Changes in urllib.py; sped up unquote() and quote(). Fixed an |
| obscure bug in quote_plus(). Added urlencode(dict) -- convenience |
| function for sending a POST request with urlopen(). Use the getpass |
| module to ask for a password. Rewrote the (test) main program so that |
| when used as a script, it can retrieve one or more URLs to stdout. |
| Use -t to run the self-test. Made the proxy code work again. |
| |
| - In cgi.py, treat "HEAD" the same as "GET", so that CGI scripts don't |
| fail when someone asks for their HEAD. Also, for POST, set the |
| default content-type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Also, in |
| FieldStorage.__init__(), when method='GET', always get the query |
| string from environ['QUERY_STRING'] or sys.argv[1] -- ignore an |
| explicitly passed in fp. |
| |
| - The smtplib.py module now supports ESMTP and has improved standard |
| compliance, for picky servers. |
| |
| - Improved imaplib.py. |
| |
| - Fixed UDP support in SocketServer.py (it never worked). |
| |
| - Fixed a small bug in CGIHTTPServer.py. |
| |
| Internet Data handling |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| - In rfc822.py, add a new class AddressList. Also support a new |
| overridable method, isheader(). Also add a get() method similar to |
| dictionaries (and make getheader() an alias for it). Also, be smarter |
| about seekable (test whether fp.tell() works) and test for presence of |
| unread() method before trying seeks. |
| |
| - In sgmllib.py, restore the call to report_unbalanced() that was lost |
| long ago. Also some other improvements: handle <? processing |
| instructions >, allow . and - in entity names, and allow \r\n as line |
| separator. |
| |
| - Some restructuring and generalization done to multifile.py; support |
| a 'seekable' flag. |
| |
| Restricted Execution |
| -------------------- |
| |
| - Improvements to rexec.py: package support; support a (minimal) |
| sys.exc_info(). Also made the (test) main program a bit fancier (you |
| can now use it to run arbitrary Python scripts in restricted mode). |
| |
| Tkinter |
| ------- |
| |
| - On Unix, Tkinter can now safely be used from a multi-threaded |
| application. (Formerly, no threads would make progress while |
| Tkinter's mainloop() was active, because it didn't release the Python |
| interpreter lock.) Unfortunately, on Windows, threads other than the |
| main thread should not call update() or update_idletasks() because |
| this will deadlock the application. |
| |
| - An interactive interpreter that uses readline and Tkinter no longer |
| uses up all available CPU time. |
| |
| - Even if readline is not used, Tk windows created in an interactive |
| interpreter now get continuously updated. (This even works in Windows |
| as long as you don't hit a key.) |
| |
| - New demos in Demo/tkinter/guido/: brownian.py, redemo.py, switch.py. |
| |
| - No longer register Tcl_finalize() as a low-level exit handler. It |
| may call back into Python, and that's a bad idea. |
| |
| - Allow binding of Tcl commands (given as a string). |
| |
| - Some minor speedups; replace explicitly coded getint() with int() in |
| most places. |
| |
| - In FileDialog.py, remember the directory of the selected file, if |
| given. |
| |
| - Change the names of all methods in the Wm class: they are now |
| wm_title(), etc. The old names (title() etc.) are still defined as |
| aliases. |
| |
| - Add a new method of interpreter objects, interpaddr(). This returns |
| the address of the Tcl interpreter object, as an integer. Not very |
| useful for the Python programmer, but this can be called by another C |
| extension that needs to make calls into the Tcl/Tk C API and needs to |
| get the address of the Tcl interpreter object. A simple cast of the |
| return value to (Tcl_Interp *) will do the trick. |
| |
| Windows General |
| --------------- |
| |
| - Don't insist on proper case for module source files if the filename |
| is all uppercase (e.g. FOO.PY now matches foo; but FOO.py still |
| doesn't). This should address problems with this feature on |
| oldfashioned filesystems (Novell servers?). |
| |
| Windows Library |
| --------------- |
| |
| - os.environ is now all uppercase, but accesses are case insensitive, |
| and the putenv() calls made as a side effect of changing os.environ |
| are case preserving. |
| |
| - Removed samefile(), sameopenfile(), samestat() from os.path (aka |
| ntpath.py) -- these cannot be made to work reliably (at least I |
| wouldn't know how). |
| |
| - Fixed os.pipe() so that it returns file descriptors acceptable to |
| os.read() and os.write() (like it does on Unix), rather than Windows |
| file handles. |
| |
| - Added a table of WSA error codes to socket.py. |
| |
| - In the select module, put the (huge) file descriptor arrays on the |
| heap. |
| |
| - The getpass module now raises KeyboardInterrupt when it sees ^C. |
| |
| - In mailbox.py, fix tell/seek when using files opened in text mode. |
| |
| - In rfc822.py, fix tell/seek when using files opened in text mode. |
| |
| - In the msvcrt extension module, release the interpreter lock for |
| calls that may block: _locking(), _getch(), _getche(). Also fix a |
| bogus error return when open_osfhandle() doesn't have the right |
| argument list. |
| |
| Windows Installer |
| ----------------- |
| |
| - The registry key used is now "1.5" instead of "1.5.x" -- so future |
| versions of 1.5 and Mark Hammond's win32all installer don't need to be |
| resynchronized. |
| |
| Windows Tools |
| ------------- |
| |
| - Several improvements to freeze specifically for Windows. |
| |
| Windows Build Procedure |
| ----------------------- |
| |
| - The VC++ project files and the WISE installer have been moved to the |
| PCbuild subdirectory, so they are distributed in the same subdirectory |
| where they must be used. This avoids confusion. |
| |
| - New project files for Windows 3.1 port by Jim Ahlstrom. |
| |
| - Got rid of the obsolete subdirectory PC/setup_nt/. |
| |
| - The projects now use distinct filenames for the .exe, .dll, .lib and |
| .pyd files built in debug mode (by appending "_d" to the base name, |
| before the extension). This makes it easier to switch between the two |
| and get the right versions. There's a pragma in config.h that directs |
| the linker to include the appropriate .lib file (so python15.lib no |
| longer needs to be explicit in your project). |
| |
| - The installer now installs more files (e.g. config.h). The idea is |
| that you shouldn't need the source distribution if you want build your |
| own extensions in C or C++. |
| |
| Tools and Demos |
| --------------- |
| |
| - New script nm2def.py by Marc-Andre Lemburg, to construct |
| PC/python_nt.def automatically (some hand editing still required). |
| |
| - New tool ndiff.py: Tim Peters' text diffing tool. |
| |
| - Various and sundry improvements to the freeze script. |
| |
| - The script texi2html.py (which was part of the Doc tree but is no |
| longer used there) has been moved to the Tools/scripts subdirectory. |
| |
| - Some generalizations in the webchecker code. There's now a |
| primnitive gui for websucker.py: wsgui.py. (In Tools/webchecker/.) |
| |
| - The ftpmirror.py script now handles symbolic links properly, and |
| also files with multiple spaces in their names. |
| |
| - The 1.5.1 tabnanny.py suffers an assert error if fed a script whose |
| last line is both indented and lacks a newline. This is now fixed. |
| |
| Python/C API |
| ------------ |
| |
| - Added missing prototypes for PyEval_CallFunction() and |
| PyEval_CallMethod(). |
| |
| - New macro PyList_SET_ITEM(). |
| |
| - New macros to access object members for PyFunction, PyCFunction |
| objects. |
| |
| - New APIs PyImport_AppendInittab() an PyImport_ExtendInittab() to |
| dynamically add one or many entries to the table of built-in modules. |
| |
| - New macro Py_InitModule3(name, methods, doc) which calls |
| Py_InitModule4() with appropriate arguments. (The -4 variant requires |
| you to pass an obscure version number constant which is always the same.) |
| |
| - New APIs PySys_WriteStdout() and PySys_WriteStderr() to write to |
| sys.stdout or sys.stderr using a printf-like interface. (Used in |
| _tkinter.c, for example.) |
| |
| - New APIs for conversion between Python longs and C 'long long' if |
| your compiler supports it. |
| |
| - PySequence_In() is now called PySequence_Contains(). |
| (PySequence_In() is still supported for b/w compatibility; it is |
| declared obsolete because its argument order is confusing.) |
| |
| - PyDict_GetItem() and PyDict_GetItemString() are changed so that they |
| *never* raise an exception -- (even if the hash() fails, simply clear |
| the error). This was necessary because there is lots of code out |
| there that already assumes this. |
| |
| - Changes to PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_List() to use the |
| length of a sequence only as a hint -- if an IndexError happens |
| earlier, take that. (Formerly, this was considered an error.) |
| |
| - Reformatted abstract.c to give it a more familiar "look" and fixed |
| many error checking bugs. |
| |
| - Add NULL pointer checks to all calls of a C function through a type |
| object and extensions (e.g. nb_add). |
| |
| - The code that initializes sys.path now calls Py_GetPythonHome() |
| instead of getenv("PYTHONHOME"). This, together with the new API |
| Py_SetPythonHome(), makes it easier for embedding applications to |
| change the notion of Python's "home" directory (where the libraries |
| etc. are sought). |
| |
| - Fixed a very old bug in the parsing of "O?" format specifiers. |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |