| Python history |
| -------------- |
| |
| This file contains the release messages for previous Python releases |
| (slightly edited to adapt them to the format of this file). As you |
| read on you go back to the dark ages of Python's history. |
| |
| |
| =================================== |
| ==> Release 1.1.1 (10 Nov 1994) <== |
| =================================== |
| |
| This is a pure bugfix release again. See the ChangeLog file for details. |
| |
| One exception: a few new features were added to tkinter. |
| |
| |
| ================================= |
| ==> Release 1.1 (11 Oct 1994) <== |
| ================================= |
| |
| This release adds several new features, improved configuration and |
| portability, and fixes more bugs than I can list here (including some |
| memory leaks). |
| |
| The source compiles and runs out of the box on more platforms than |
| ever -- including Windows NT. Makefiles or projects for a variety of |
| non-UNIX platforms are provided. |
| |
| APOLOGY: some new features are badly documented or not at all. I had |
| the choice -- postpone the new release indefinitely, or release it |
| now, with working code but some undocumented areas. The problem with |
| postponing the release is that people continue to suffer from existing |
| bugs, and send me patches based on the previous release -- which I |
| can't apply directly because my own source has changed. Also, some |
| new modules (like signal) have been ready for release for quite some |
| time, and people are anxiously waiting for them. In the case of |
| signal, the interface is simple enough to figure out without |
| documentation (if you're anxious enough :-). In this case it was not |
| simple to release the module on its own, since it relies on many small |
| patches elsewhere in the source. |
| |
| For most new Python modules, the source code contains comments that |
| explain how to use them. Documentation for the Tk interface, written |
| by Matt Conway, is available as tkinter-doc.tar.gz from the Python |
| home and mirror ftp sites (see Misc/FAQ for ftp addresses). For the |
| new operator overloading facilities, have a look at Demo/classes: |
| Complex.py and Rat.py show how to implement a numeric type without and |
| with __coerce__ method. Also have a look at the end of the Tutorial |
| document (Doc/tut.tex). If you're still confused: use the newsgroup |
| or mailing list. |
| |
| |
| New language features: |
| |
| - More flexible operator overloading for user-defined classes |
| (INCOMPATIBLE WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS!) See end of tutorial. |
| |
| - Classes can define methods named __getattr__, __setattr__ and |
| __delattr__ to trap attribute accesses. See end of tutorial. |
| |
| - Classes can define method __call__ so instances can be called |
| directly. See end of tutorial. |
| |
| |
| New support facilities: |
| |
| - The Makefiles (for the base interpreter as well as for extensions) |
| now support creating dynamically loadable modules if the platform |
| supports shared libraries. |
| |
| - Passing the interpreter a .pyc file as script argument will execute |
| the code in that file. (On the Mac such files can be double-clicked!) |
| |
| - New Freeze script, to create independently distributable "binaries" |
| of Python programs -- look in Demo/freeze |
| |
| - Improved h2py script (in Demo/scripts) follows #includes and |
| supports macros with one argument |
| |
| - New module compileall generates .pyc files for all modules in a |
| directory (tree) without also executing them |
| |
| - Threads should work on more platforms |
| |
| |
| New built-in modules: |
| |
| - tkinter (support for Tcl's Tk widget set) is now part of the base |
| distribution |
| |
| - signal allows catching or ignoring UNIX signals (unfortunately still |
| undocumented -- any taker?) |
| |
| - termios provides portable access to POSIX tty settings |
| |
| - curses provides an interface to the System V curses library |
| |
| - syslog provides an interface to the (BSD?) syslog daemon |
| |
| - 'new' provides interfaces to create new built-in object types |
| (e.g. modules and functions) |
| |
| - sybase provides an interface to SYBASE database |
| |
| |
| New/obsolete built-in methods: |
| |
| - callable(x) tests whether x can be called |
| |
| - sockets now have a setblocking() method |
| |
| - sockets no longer have an allowbroadcast() method |
| |
| - socket methods send() and sendto() return byte count |
| |
| |
| New standard library modules: |
| |
| - types.py defines standard names for built-in types, e.g. StringType |
| |
| - urlparse.py parses URLs according to the latest Internet draft |
| |
| - uu.py does uuencode/uudecode (not the fastest in the world, but |
| quicker than installing uuencode on a non-UNIX machine :-) |
| |
| - New, faster and more powerful profile module.py |
| |
| - mhlib.py provides interface to MH folders and messages |
| |
| |
| New facilities for extension writers (unfortunately still |
| undocumented): |
| |
| - newgetargs() supports optional arguments and improved error messages |
| |
| - O!, O& O? formats for getargs allow more versatile type checking of |
| non-standard types |
| |
| - can register pending asynchronous callback, to be called the next |
| time the Python VM begins a new instruction (Py_AddPendingCall) |
| |
| - can register cleanup routines to be called when Python exits |
| (Py_AtExit) |
| |
| - makesetup script understands C++ files in Setup file (use file.C |
| or file.cc) |
| |
| - Make variable OPT is passed on to sub-Makefiles |
| |
| - An init<module>() routine may signal an error by not entering |
| the module in the module table and raising an exception instead |
| |
| - For long module names, instead of foobarbletchmodule.c you can |
| use foobarbletch.c |
| |
| - getintvalue() and getfloatvalue() try to convert any object |
| instead of requiring an "intobject" or "floatobject" |
| |
| - All the [new]getargs() formats that retrieve an integer value |
| will now also work if a float is passed |
| |
| - C function listtuple() converts list to tuple, fast |
| |
| - You should now call sigcheck() instead of intrcheck(); |
| sigcheck() also sets an exception when it returns nonzero |
| |
| |
| ==================================== |
| ==> Release 1.0.3 (14 July 1994) <== |
| ==================================== |
| |
| This release consists entirely of bug fixes to the C sources; see the |
| head of ../ChangeLog for a complete list. Most important bugs fixed: |
| |
| - Sometimes the format operator (string%expr) would drop the last |
| character of the format string |
| |
| - Tokenizer looped when last line did not end in \n |
| |
| - Bug when triple-quoted string ended in quote plus newline |
| |
| - Typo in socketmodule (listen) (== instead of =) |
| |
| - typing vars() at the >>> prompt would cause recursive output |
| |
| |
| ================================== |
| ==> Release 1.0.2 (4 May 1994) <== |
| ================================== |
| |
| Overview of the most visible changes. Bug fixes are not listed. See |
| also ChangeLog. |
| |
| Tokens |
| ------ |
| |
| * String literals follow Standard C rules: they may be continued on |
| the next line using a backslash; adjacent literals are concatenated |
| at compile time. |
| |
| * A new kind of string literals, surrounded by triple quotes (""" or |
| '''), can be continued on the next line without a backslash. |
| |
| Syntax |
| ------ |
| |
| * Function arguments may have a default value, e.g. def f(a, b=1); |
| defaults are evaluated at function definition time. This also applies |
| to lambda. |
| |
| * The try-except statement has an optional else clause, which is |
| executed when no exception occurs in the try clause. |
| |
| Interpreter |
| ----------- |
| |
| * The result of a statement-level expression is no longer printed, |
| except_ for expressions entered interactively. Consequently, the -k |
| command line option is gone. |
| |
| * The result of the last printed interactive expression is assigned to |
| the variable '_'. |
| |
| * Access to implicit global variables has been speeded up by removing |
| an always-failing dictionary lookup in the dictionary of local |
| variables (mod suggested by Steve Makewski and Tim Peters). |
| |
| * There is a new command line option, -u, to force stdout and stderr |
| to be unbuffered. |
| |
| * Incorporated Steve Majewski's mods to import.c for dynamic loading |
| under AIX. |
| |
| * Fewer chances of dumping core when trying to reload or re-import |
| static built-in, dynamically loaded built-in, or frozen modules. |
| |
| * Loops over sequences now don't ask for the sequence's length when |
| they start, but try to access items 0, 1, 2, and so on until they hit |
| an IndexError. This makes it possible to create classes that generate |
| infinite or indefinite sequences a la Steve Majewski. This affects |
| for loops, the (not) in operator, and the built-in functions filter(), |
| map(), max(), min(), reduce(). |
| |
| Changed Built-in operations |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| * The '%' operator on strings (printf-style formatting) supports a new |
| feature (adapted from a patch by Donald Beaudry) to allow |
| '%(<key>)<format>' % {...} to take values from a dictionary by name |
| instead of from a tuple by position (see also the new function |
| vars()). |
| |
| * The '%s' formatting operator is changed to accept any type and |
| convert it to a string using str(). |
| |
| * Dictionaries with more than 20,000 entries can now be created |
| (thanks to Steve Kirsch). |
| |
| New Built-in Functions |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| * vars() returns a dictionary containing the local variables; vars(m) |
| returns a dictionary containing the variables of module m. Note: |
| dir(x) is now equivalent to vars(x).keys(). |
| |
| Changed Built-in Functions |
| -------------------------- |
| |
| * open() has an optional third argument to specify the buffer size: 0 |
| for unbuffered, 1 for line buffered, >1 for explicit buffer size, <0 |
| for default. |
| |
| * open()'s second argument is now optional; it defaults to "r". |
| |
| * apply() now checks that its second argument is indeed a tuple. |
| |
| New Built-in Modules |
| -------------------- |
| |
| Changed Built-in Modules |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| The thread module no longer supports exit_prog(). |
| |
| New Python Modules |
| ------------------ |
| |
| * Module addpack contains a standard interface to modify sys.path to |
| find optional packages (groups of related modules). |
| |
| * Module urllib contains a number of functions to access |
| World-Wide-Web files specified by their URL. |
| |
| * Module httplib implements the client side of the HTTP protocol used |
| by World-Wide-Web servers. |
| |
| * Module gopherlib implements the client side of the Gopher protocol. |
| |
| * Module mailbox (by Jack Jansen) contains a parser for UNIX and MMDF |
| style mailbox files. |
| |
| * Module random contains various random distributions, e.g. gauss(). |
| |
| * Module lockfile locks and unlocks open files using fcntl (inspired |
| by a similar module by Andy Bensky). |
| |
| * Module ntpath (by Jaap Vermeulen) implements path operations for |
| Windows/NT. |
| |
| * Module test_thread (in Lib/test) contains a small test set for the |
| thread module. |
| |
| Changed Python Modules |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| * The string module's expandvars() function is now documented and is |
| implemented in Python (using regular expressions) instead of forking |
| off a shell process. |
| |
| * Module rfc822 now supports accessing the header fields using the |
| mapping/dictionary interface, e.g. h['subject']. |
| |
| * Module pdb now makes it possible to set a break on a function |
| (syntax: break <expression>, where <expression> yields a function |
| object). |
| |
| Changed Demos |
| ------------- |
| |
| * The Demo/scripts/freeze.py script is working again (thanks to Jaap |
| Vermeulen). |
| |
| New Demos |
| --------- |
| |
| * Demo/threads/Generator.py is a proposed interface for restartable |
| functions a la Tim Peters. |
| |
| * Demo/scripts/newslist.py, by Quentin Stafford-Fraser, generates a |
| directory full of HTML pages which between them contain links to all |
| the newsgroups available on your server. |
| |
| * Demo/dns contains a DNS (Domain Name Server) client. |
| |
| * Demo/lutz contains miscellaneous demos by Mark Lutz (e.g. psh.py, a |
| nice enhanced Python shell!!!). |
| |
| * Demo/turing contains a Turing machine by Amrit Prem. |
| |
| Documentation |
| ------------- |
| |
| * Documented new language features mentioned above (but not all new |
| modules). |
| |
| * Added a chapter to the Tutorial describing recent additions to |
| Python. |
| |
| * Clarified some sentences in the reference manual, |
| e.g. break/continue, local/global scope, slice assignment. |
| |
| Source Structure |
| ---------------- |
| |
| * Moved Include/tokenizer.h to Parser/tokenizer.h. |
| |
| * Added Python/getopt.c for systems that don't have it. |
| |
| Emacs mode |
| ---------- |
| |
| * Indentation of continuated lines is done more intelligently; |
| consequently the variable py-continuation-offset is gone. |
| |
| ======================================== |
| ==> Release 1.0.1 (15 February 1994) <== |
| ======================================== |
| |
| * Many portability fixes should make it painless to build Python on |
| several new platforms, e.g. NeXT, SEQUENT, WATCOM, DOS, and Windows. |
| |
| * Fixed test for <stdarg.h> -- this broke on some platforms. |
| |
| * Fixed test for shared library dynalic loading -- this broke on SunOS |
| 4.x using the GNU loader. |
| |
| * Changed order and number of SVR4 networking libraries (it is now |
| -lsocket -linet -lnsl, if these libraries exist). |
| |
| * Installing the build intermediate stages with "make libainstall" now |
| also installs config.c.in, Setup and makesetup, which are used by the |
| new Extensions mechanism. |
| |
| * Improved README file contains more hints and new troubleshooting |
| section. |
| |
| * The built-in module strop now defines fast versions of three more |
| functions of the standard string module: atoi(), atol() and atof(). |
| The strop versions of atoi() and atol() support an optional second |
| argument to specify the base (default 10). NOTE: you don't have to |
| explicitly import strop to use the faster versions -- the string |
| module contains code to let versions from stop override the default |
| versions. |
| |
| * There is now a working Lib/dospath.py for those who use Python under |
| DOS (or Windows). Thanks, Jaap! |
| |
| * There is now a working Modules/dosmodule.c for DOS (or Windows) |
| system calls. |
| |
| * Lib.os.py has been reorganized (making it ready for more operating |
| systems). |
| |
| * Lib/ospath.py is now obsolete (use os.path instead). |
| |
| * Many fixes to the tutorial to make it match Python 1.0. Thanks, |
| Tim! |
| |
| * Fixed Doc/Makefile, Doc/README and various scripts there. |
| |
| * Added missing description of fdopen to Doc/libposix.tex. |
| |
| * Made cleanup() global, for the benefit of embedded applications. |
| |
| * Added parsing of addresses and dates to Lib/rfc822.py. |
| |
| * Small fixes to Lib/aifc.py, Lib/sunau.py, Lib/tzparse.py to make |
| them usable at all. |
| |
| * New module Lib/wave.py reads RIFF (*.wav) audio files. |
| |
| * Module Lib/filewin.py moved to Lib/stdwin/filewin.py where it |
| belongs. |
| |
| * New options and comments for Modules/makesetup (used by new |
| Extension mechanism). |
| |
| * Misc/HYPE contains text of announcement of 1.0.0 in comp.lang.misc |
| and elsewhere. |
| |
| * Fixed coredump in filter(None, 'abcdefg'). |
| |
| |
| ======================================= |
| ==> Release 1.0.0 (26 January 1994) <== |
| ======================================= |
| |
| As is traditional, so many things have changed that I can't pretend to |
| be complete in these release notes, but I'll try anyway :-) |
| |
| Note that the very last section is labeled "remaining bugs". |
| |
| |
| Source organization and build process |
| ------------------------------------- |
| |
| * The sources have finally been split: instead of a single src |
| subdirectory there are now separate directories Include, Parser, |
| Grammar, Objects, Python and Modules. Other directories also start |
| with a capital letter: Misc, Doc, Lib, Demo. |
| |
| * A few extensions (notably Amoeba and X support) have been moved to a |
| separate subtree Extensions, which is no longer in the core |
| distribution, but separately ftp'able as extensions.tar.Z. (The |
| distribution contains a placeholder Ext-dummy with a description of |
| the Extensions subtree as well as the most recent versions of the |
| scripts used there.) |
| |
| * A few large specialized demos (SGI video and www) have been |
| moved to a separate subdirectory Demo2, which is no longer in the core |
| distribution, but separately ftp'able as demo2.tar.Z. |
| |
| * Parts of the standard library have been moved to subdirectories: |
| there are now standard subdirectories stdwin, test, sgi and sun4. |
| |
| * The configuration process has radically changed: I now use GNU |
| autoconf. This makes it much easier to build on new Unix flavors, as |
| well as fully supporting VPATH (if your Make has it). The scripts |
| Configure.py and Addmodule.sh are no longer needed. Many source files |
| have been adapted in order to work with the symbols that the configure |
| script generated by autoconf defines (or not); the resulting source is |
| much more portable to different C compilers and operating systems, |
| even non Unix systems (a Mac port was done in an afternoon). See the |
| toplevel README file for a description of the new build process. |
| |
| * GNU readline (a slightly newer version) is now a subdirectory of the |
| Python toplevel. It is still not automatically configured (being |
| totally autoconf-unaware :-). One problem has been solved: typing |
| Control-C to a readline prompt will now work. The distribution no |
| longer contains a "super-level" directory (above the python toplevel |
| directory), and dl, dl-dld and GNU dld are no longer part of the |
| Python distribution (you can still ftp them from |
| ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/dynload). |
| |
| * The DOS functions have been taken out of posixmodule.c and moved |
| into a separate file dosmodule.c. |
| |
| * There's now a separate file version.c which contains nothing but |
| the version number. |
| |
| * The actual main program is now contained in config.c (unless NO_MAIN |
| is defined); pythonmain.c now contains a function realmain() which is |
| called from config.c's main(). |
| |
| * All files needed to use the built-in module md5 are now contained in |
| the distribution. The module has been cleaned up considerably. |
| |
| |
| Documentation |
| ------------- |
| |
| * The library manual has been split into many more small latex files, |
| so it is easier to edit Doc/lib.tex file to create a custom library |
| manual, describing only those modules supported on your system. (This |
| is not automated though.) |
| |
| * A fourth manual has been added, titled "Extending and Embedding the |
| Python Interpreter" (Doc/ext.tex), which collects information about |
| the interpreter which was previously spread over several files in the |
| misc subdirectory. |
| |
| * The entire documentation is now also available on-line for those who |
| have a WWW browser (e.g. NCSA Mosaic). Point your browser to the URL |
| "http://www.cwi.nl/~guido/Python.html". |
| |
| |
| Syntax |
| ------ |
| |
| * Strings may now be enclosed in double quotes as well as in single |
| quotes. There is no difference in interpretation. The repr() of |
| string objects will use double quotes if the string contains a single |
| quote and no double quotes. Thanks to Amrit Prem for these changes! |
| |
| * There is a new keyword 'exec'. This replaces the exec() built-in |
| function. If a function contains an exec statement, local variable |
| optimization is not performed for that particular function, thus |
| making assignment to local variables in exec statements less |
| confusing. (As a consequence, os.exec and python.exec have been |
| renamed to execv.) |
| |
| * There is a new keyword 'lambda'. An expression of the form |
| |
| lambda <parameters> : <expression> |
| |
| yields an anonymous function. This is really only syntactic sugar; |
| you can just as well define a local function using |
| |
| def some_temporary_name(<parameters>): return <expression> |
| |
| Lambda expressions are particularly useful in combination with map(), |
| filter() and reduce(), described below. Thanks to Amrit Prem for |
| submitting this code (as well as map(), filter(), reduce() and |
| xrange())! |
| |
| |
| Built-in functions |
| ------------------ |
| |
| * The built-in module containing the built-in functions is called |
| __builtin__ instead of builtin. |
| |
| * New built-in functions map(), filter() and reduce() perform standard |
| functional programming operations (though not lazily): |
| |
| - map(f, seq) returns a new sequence whose items are the items from |
| seq with f() applied to them. |
| |
| - filter(f, seq) returns a subsequence of seq consisting of those |
| items for which f() is true. |
| |
| - reduce(f, seq, initial) returns a value computed as follows: |
| acc = initial |
| for item in seq: acc = f(acc, item) |
| return acc |
| |
| * New function xrange() creates a "range object". Its arguments are |
| the same as those of range(), and when used in a for loop a range |
| objects also behaves identical. The advantage of xrange() over |
| range() is that its representation (if the range contains many |
| elements) is much more compact than that of range(). The disadvantage |
| is that the result cannot be used to initialize a list object or for |
| the "Python idiom" [RED, GREEN, BLUE] = range(3). On some modern |
| architectures, benchmarks have shown that "for i in range(...): ..." |
| actually executes *faster* than "for i in xrange(...): ...", but on |
| memory starved machines like PCs running DOS range(100000) may be just |
| too big to be represented at all... |
| |
| * Built-in function exec() has been replaced by the exec statement -- |
| see above. |
| |
| |
| The interpreter |
| --------------- |
| |
| * Syntax errors are now not printed to stderr by the parser, but |
| rather the offending line and other relevant information are packed up |
| in the SyntaxError exception argument. When the main loop catches a |
| SyntaxError exception it will print the error in the same format as |
| previously, but at the proper position in the stack traceback. |
| |
| * You can now set a maximum to the number of traceback entries |
| printed by assigning to sys.tracebacklimit. The default is 1000. |
| |
| * The version number in .pyc files has changed yet again. |
| |
| * It is now possible to have a .pyc file without a corresponding .py |
| file. (Warning: this may break existing installations if you have an |
| old .pyc file lingering around somewhere on your module search path |
| without a corresponding .py file, when there is a .py file for a |
| module of the same name further down the path -- the new interpreter |
| will find the first .pyc file and complain about it, while the old |
| interpreter would ignore it and use the .py file further down.) |
| |
| * The list sys.builtin_module_names is now sorted and also contains |
| the names of a few hardwired built-in modules (sys, __main__ and |
| __builtin__). |
| |
| * A module can now find its own name by accessing the global variable |
| __name__. Assigning to this variable essentially renames the module |
| (it should also be stored under a different key in sys.modules). |
| A neat hack follows from this: a module that wants to execute a main |
| program when called as a script no longer needs to compare |
| sys.argv[0]; it can simply do "if __name__ == '__main__': main()". |
| |
| * When an object is printed by the print statement, its implementation |
| of str() is used. This means that classes can define __str__(self) to |
| direct how their instances are printed. This is different from |
| __repr__(self), which should define an unambigous string |
| representation of the instance. (If __str__() is not defined, it |
| defaults to __repr__().) |
| |
| * Functions and code objects can now be compared meaningfully. |
| |
| * On systems supporting SunOS or SVR4 style shared libraries, dynamic |
| loading of modules using shared libraries is automatically configured. |
| Thanks to Bill Jansen and Denis Severson for contributing this change! |
| |
| |
| Built-in objects |
| ---------------- |
| |
| * File objects have acquired a new method writelines() which is the |
| reverse of readlines(). (It does not actually write lines, just a |
| list of strings, but the symmetry makes the choice of name OK.) |
| |
| |
| Built-in modules |
| ---------------- |
| |
| * Socket objects no longer support the avail() method. Use the select |
| module instead, or use this function to replace it: |
| |
| def avail(f): |
| import select |
| return f in select.select([f], [], [], 0)[0] |
| |
| * Initialization of stdwin is done differently. It actually modifies |
| sys.argv (taking out the options the X version of stdwin recognizes) |
| the first time it is imported. |
| |
| * A new built-in module parser provides a rudimentary interface to the |
| python parser. Corresponding standard library modules token and symbol |
| defines the numeric values of tokens and non-terminal symbols. |
| |
| * The posix module has aquired new functions setuid(), setgid(), |
| execve(), and exec() has been renamed to execv(). |
| |
| * The array module is extended with 8-byte object swaps, the 'i' |
| format character, and a reverse() method. The read() and write() |
| methods are renamed to fromfile() and tofile(). |
| |
| * The rotor module has freed of portability bugs. This introduces a |
| backward compatibility problem: strings encoded with the old rotor |
| module can't be decoded by the new version. |
| |
| * For select.select(), a timeout (4th) argument of None means the same |
| as leaving the timeout argument out. |
| |
| * Module strop (and hence standard library module string) has aquired |
| a new function: rindex(). Thanks to Amrit Prem! |
| |
| * Module regex defines a new function symcomp() which uses an extended |
| regular expression syntax: parenthesized subexpressions may be labeled |
| using the form "\(<labelname>...\)", and the group() method can return |
| sub-expressions by name. Thanks to Tracy Tims for these changes! |
| |
| * Multiple threads are now supported on Solaris 2. Thanks to Sjoerd |
| Mullender! |
| |
| |
| Standard library modules |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| * The library is now split in several subdirectories: all stuff using |
| stdwin is in Lib/stdwin, all SGI specific (or SGI Indigo or GL) stuff |
| is in Lib/sgi, all Sun Sparc specific stuff is in Lib/sun4, and all |
| test modules are in Lib/test. The default module search path will |
| include all relevant subdirectories by default. |
| |
| * Module os now knows about trying to import dos. It defines |
| functions execl(), execle(), execlp() and execvp(). |
| |
| * New module dospath (should be attacked by a DOS hacker though). |
| |
| * All modules defining classes now define __init__() constructors |
| instead of init() methods. THIS IS AN INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE! |
| |
| * Some minor changes and bugfixes module ftplib (mostly Steve |
| Majewski's suggestions); the debug() method is renamed to |
| set_debuglevel(). |
| |
| * Some new test modules (not run automatically by testall though): |
| test_audioop, test_md5, test_rgbimg, test_select. |
| |
| * Module string now defines rindex() and rfind() in analogy of index() |
| and find(). It also defines atof() and atol() (and corresponding |
| exceptions) in analogy to atoi(). |
| |
| * Added help() functions to modules profile and pdb. |
| |
| * The wdb debugger (now in Lib/stdwin) now shows class or instance |
| variables on a double click. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender! |
| |
| * The (undocumented) module lambda has gone -- you couldn't import it |
| any more, and it was basically more a demo than a library module... |
| |
| |
| Multimedia extensions |
| --------------------- |
| |
| * The optional built-in modules audioop and imageop are now standard |
| parts of the interpreter. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender and Jack Jansen |
| for contributing this code! |
| |
| * There's a new operation in audioop: minmax(). |
| |
| * There's a new built-in module called rgbimg which supports portable |
| efficient reading of SGI RCG image files. Thanks also to Paul |
| Haeberli for the original code! (Who will contribute a GIF reader?) |
| |
| * The module aifc is gone -- you should now always use aifc, which has |
| received a facelift. |
| |
| * There's a new module sunau., for reading Sun (and NeXT) audio files. |
| |
| * There's a new module audiodev which provides a uniform interface to |
| (SGI Indigo and Sun Sparc) audio hardware. |
| |
| * There's a new module sndhdr which recognizes various sound files by |
| looking in their header and checking for various magic words. |
| |
| |
| Optimizations |
| ------------- |
| |
| * Most optimizations below can be configured by compile-time flags. |
| Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender for submitting these optimizations! |
| |
| * Small integers (default -1..99) are shared -- i.e. if two different |
| functions compute the same value it is possible (but not |
| guaranteed!!!) that they return the same *object*. Python programs |
| can detect this but should *never* rely on it. |
| |
| * Empty tuples (which all compare equal) are shared in the same |
| manner. |
| |
| * Tuples of size up to 20 (default) are put in separate free lists |
| when deallocated. |
| |
| * There is a compile-time option to cache a string's hash function, |
| but this appeared to have a negligeable effect, and as it costs 4 |
| bytes per string it is disabled by default. |
| |
| |
| Embedding Python |
| ---------------- |
| |
| * The initialization interface has been simplified somewhat. You now |
| only call "initall()" to initialize the interpreter. |
| |
| * The previously announced renaming of externally visible identifiers |
| has not been carried out. It will happen in a later release. Sorry. |
| |
| |
| Miscellaneous bugs that have been fixed |
| --------------------------------------- |
| |
| * All known portability bugs. |
| |
| * Version 0.9.9 dumped core in <listobject>.sort() which has been |
| fixed. Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen for fixing this and posting the fix |
| on the mailing list while I was away! |
| |
| * Core dump on a format string ending in '%', e.g. in the expression |
| '%' % None. |
| |
| * The array module yielded a bogus result for concatenation (a+b would |
| yield a+a). |
| |
| * Some serious memory leaks in strop.split() and strop.splitfields(). |
| |
| * Several problems with the nis module. |
| |
| * Subtle problem when copying a class method from another class |
| through assignment (the method could not be called). |
| |
| |
| Remaining bugs |
| -------------- |
| |
| * One problem with 64-bit machines remains -- since .pyc files are |
| portable and use only 4 bytes to represent an integer object, 64-bit |
| integer literals are silently truncated when written into a .pyc file. |
| Work-around: use eval('123456789101112'). |
| |
| * The freeze script doesn't work any more. A new and more portable |
| one can probably be cooked up using tricks from Extensions/mkext.py. |
| |
| * The dos support hasn't been tested yet. (Really Soon Now we should |
| have a PC with a working C compiler!) |
| |
| |
| =================================== |
| ==> Release 0.9.9 (29 Jul 1993) <== |
| =================================== |
| |
| I *believe* these are the main user-visible changes in this release, |
| but there may be others. SGI users may scan the {src,lib}/ChangeLog |
| files for improvements of some SGI specific modules, e.g. aifc and |
| cl. Developers of extension modules should also read src/ChangeLog. |
| |
| |
| Naming of C symbols used by the Python interpreter |
| -------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| * This is the last release using the current naming conventions. New |
| naming conventions are explained in the file misc/NAMING. |
| Summarizing, all externally visible symbols get (at least) a "Py" |
| prefix, and most functions are renamed to the standard form |
| PyModule_FunctionName. |
| |
| * Writers of extensions are urged to start using the new naming |
| conventions. The next release will use the new naming conventions |
| throughout (it will also have a different source directory |
| structure). |
| |
| * As a result of the preliminary work for the great renaming, many |
| functions that were accidentally global have been made static. |
| |
| |
| BETA X11 support |
| ---------------- |
| |
| * There are now modules interfacing to the X11 Toolkit Intrinsics, the |
| Athena widgets, and the Motif 1.1 widget set. These are not yet |
| documented except through the examples and README file in the demo/x11 |
| directory. It is expected that this interface will be replaced by a |
| more powerful and correct one in the future, which may or may not be |
| backward compatible. In other words, this part of the code is at most |
| BETA level software! (Note: the rest of Python is rock solid as ever!) |
| |
| * I understand that the above may be a bit of a disappointment, |
| however my current schedule does not allow me to change this situation |
| before putting the release out of the door. By releasing it |
| undocumented and buggy, at least some of the (working!) demo programs, |
| like itr (my Internet Talk Radio browser) become available to a larger |
| audience. |
| |
| * There are also modules interfacing to SGI's "Glx" widget (a GL |
| window wrapped in a widget) and to NCSA's "HTML" widget (which can |
| format HyperText Markup Language, the document format used by the |
| World Wide Web). |
| |
| * I've experienced some problems when building the X11 support. In |
| particular, the Xm and Xaw widget sets don't go together, and it |
| appears that using X11R5 is better than using X11R4. Also the threads |
| module and its link time options may spoil things. My own strategy is |
| to build two Python binaries: one for use with X11 and one without |
| it, which can contain a richer set of built-in modules. Don't even |
| *think* of loading the X11 modules dynamically... |
| |
| |
| Environmental changes |
| --------------------- |
| |
| * Compiled files (*.pyc files) created by this Python version are |
| incompatible with those created by the previous version. Both |
| versions detect this and silently create a correct version, but it |
| means that it is not a good idea to use the same library directory for |
| an old and a new interpreter, since they will start to "fight" over |
| the *.pyc files... |
| |
| * When a stack trace is printed, the exception is printed last instead |
| of first. This means that if the beginning of the stack trace |
| scrolled out of your window you can still see what exception caused |
| it. |
| |
| * Sometimes interrupting a Python operation does not work because it |
| hangs in a blocking system call. You can now kill the interpreter by |
| interrupting it three times. The second time you interrupt it, a |
| message will be printed telling you that the third interrupt will kill |
| the interpreter. The "sys.exitfunc" feature still makes limited |
| clean-up possible in this case. |
| |
| |
| Changes to the command line interface |
| ------------------------------------- |
| |
| * The python usage message is now much more informative. |
| |
| * New option -i enters interactive mode after executing a script -- |
| useful for debugging. |
| |
| * New option -k raises an exception when an expression statement |
| yields a value other than None. |
| |
| * For each option there is now also a corresponding environment |
| variable. |
| |
| |
| Using Python as an embedded language |
| ------------------------------------ |
| |
| * The distribution now contains (some) documentation on the use of |
| Python as an "embedded language" in other applications, as well as a |
| simple example. See the file misc/EMBEDDING and the directory embed/. |
| |
| |
| Speed improvements |
| ------------------ |
| |
| * Function local variables are now generally stored in an array and |
| accessed using an integer indexing operation, instead of through a |
| dictionary lookup. (This compensates the somewhat slower dictionary |
| lookup caused by the generalization of the dictionary module.) |
| |
| |
| Changes to the syntax |
| --------------------- |
| |
| * Continuation lines can now *sometimes* be written without a |
| backslash: if the continuation is contained within nesting (), [] or |
| {} brackets the \ may be omitted. There's a much improved |
| python-mode.el in the misc directory which knows about this as well. |
| |
| * You can no longer use an empty set of parentheses to define a class |
| without base classes. That is, you no longer write this: |
| |
| class Foo(): # syntax error |
| ... |
| |
| You must write this instead: |
| |
| class Foo: |
| ... |
| |
| This was already the preferred syntax in release 0.9.8 but many |
| people seemed not to have picked it up. There's a Python script that |
| fixes old code: demo/scripts/classfix.py. |
| |
| * There's a new reserved word: "access". The syntax and semantics are |
| still subject of of research and debate (as well as undocumented), but |
| the parser knows about the keyword so you must not use it as a |
| variable, function, or attribute name. |
| |
| |
| Changes to the semantics of the language proper |
| ----------------------------------------------- |
| |
| * The following compatibility hack is removed: if a function was |
| defined with two or more arguments, and called with a single argument |
| that was a tuple with just as many arguments, the items of this tuple |
| would be used as the arguments. This is no longer supported. |
| |
| |
| Changes to the semantics of classes and instances |
| ------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| * Class variables are now also accessible as instance variables for |
| reading (assignment creates an instance variable which overrides the |
| class variable of the same name though). |
| |
| * If a class attribute is a user-defined function, a new kind of |
| object is returned: an "unbound method". This contains a pointer to |
| the class and can only be called with a first argument which is a |
| member of that class (or a derived class). |
| |
| * If a class defines a method __init__(self, arg1, ...) then this |
| method is called when a class instance is created by the classname() |
| construct. Arguments passed to classname() are passed to the |
| __init__() method. The __init__() methods of base classes are not |
| automatically called; the derived __init__() method must call these if |
| necessary (this was done so the derived __init__() method can choose |
| the call order and arguments for the base __init__() methods). |
| |
| * If a class defines a method __del__(self) then this method is called |
| when an instance of the class is about to be destroyed. This makes it |
| possible to implement clean-up of external resources attached to the |
| instance. As with __init__(), the __del__() methods of base classes |
| are not automatically called. If __del__ manages to store a reference |
| to the object somewhere, its destruction is postponed; when the object |
| is again about to be destroyed its __del__() method will be called |
| again. |
| |
| * Classes may define a method __hash__(self) to allow their instances |
| to be used as dictionary keys. This must return a 32-bit integer. |
| |
| |
| Minor improvements |
| ------------------ |
| |
| * Function and class objects now know their name (the name given in |
| the 'def' or 'class' statement that created them). |
| |
| * Class instances now know their class name. |
| |
| |
| Additions to built-in operations |
| -------------------------------- |
| |
| * The % operator with a string left argument implements formatting |
| similar to sprintf() in C. The right argument is either a single |
| value or a tuple of values. All features of Standard C sprintf() are |
| supported except %p. |
| |
| * Dictionaries now support almost any key type, instead of just |
| strings. (The key type must be an immutable type or must be a class |
| instance where the class defines a method __hash__(), in order to |
| avoid losing track of keys whose value may change.) |
| |
| * Built-in methods are now compared properly: when comparing x.meth1 |
| and y.meth2, if x is equal to y and the methods are defined by the |
| same function, x.meth1 compares equal to y.meth2. |
| |
| |
| Additions to built-in functions |
| ------------------------------- |
| |
| * str(x) returns a string version of its argument. If the argument is |
| a string it is returned unchanged, otherwise it returns `x`. |
| |
| * repr(x) returns the same as `x`. (Some users found it easier to |
| have this as a function.) |
| |
| * round(x) returns the floating point number x rounded to an whole |
| number, represented as a floating point number. round(x, n) returns x |
| rounded to n digits. |
| |
| * hasattr(x, name) returns true when x has an attribute with the given |
| name. |
| |
| * hash(x) returns a hash code (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary |
| immutable object's value. |
| |
| * id(x) returns a unique identifier (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary |
| object. |
| |
| * compile() compiles a string to a Python code object. |
| |
| * exec() and eval() now support execution of code objects. |
| |
| |
| Changes to the documented part of the library (standard modules) |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| * os.path.normpath() (a.k.a. posixpath.normpath()) has been fixed so |
| the border case '/foo/..' returns '/' instead of ''. |
| |
| * A new function string.find() is added with similar semantics to |
| string.index(); however when it does not find the given substring it |
| returns -1 instead of raising string.index_error. |
| |
| |
| Changes to built-in modules |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| * New optional module 'array' implements operations on sequences of |
| integers or floating point numbers of a particular size. This is |
| useful to manipulate large numerical arrays or to read and write |
| binary files consisting of numerical data. |
| |
| * Regular expression objects created by module regex now support a new |
| method named group(), which returns one or more \(...\) groups by number. |
| The number of groups is increased from 10 to 100. |
| |
| * Function compile() in module regex now supports an optional mapping |
| argument; a variable casefold is added to the module which can be used |
| as a standard uppercase to lowercase mapping. |
| |
| * Module time now supports many routines that are defined in the |
| Standard C time interface (<time.h>): gmtime(), localtime(), |
| asctime(), ctime(), mktime(), as well as these variables (taken from |
| System V): timezone, altzone, daylight and tzname. (The corresponding |
| functions in the undocumented module calendar have been removed; the |
| undocumented and unfinished module tzparse is now obsolete and will |
| disappear in a future release.) |
| |
| * Module strop (the fast built-in version of standard module string) |
| now uses C's definition of whitespace instead of fixing it to space, |
| tab and newline; in practice this usually means that vertical tab, |
| form feed and return are now also considered whitespace. It exports |
| the string of characters that are considered whitespace as well as the |
| characters that are considered lowercase or uppercase. |
| |
| * Module sys now defines the variable builtin_module_names, a list of |
| names of modules built into the current interpreter (including not |
| yet imported, but excluding two special modules that always have to be |
| defined -- sys and builtin). |
| |
| * Objects created by module sunaudiodev now also support flush() and |
| close() methods. |
| |
| * Socket objects created by module socket now support an optional |
| flags argument for their methods sendto() and recvfrom(). |
| |
| * Module marshal now supports dumping to and loading from strings, |
| through the functions dumps() and loads(). |
| |
| * Module stdwin now supports some new functionality. You may have to |
| ftp the latest version: ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/stdwin/stdwinforviews.tar.Z.) |
| |
| |
| Bugs fixed |
| ---------- |
| |
| * Fixed comparison of negative long integers. |
| |
| * The tokenizer no longer botches input lines longer than BUFSIZ. |
| |
| * Fixed several severe memory leaks in module select. |
| |
| * Fixed memory leaks in modules socket and sv. |
| |
| * Fixed memory leak in divmod() for long integers. |
| |
| * Problems with definition of floatsleep() on Suns fixed. |
| |
| * Many portability bugs fixed (and undoubtedly new ones added :-). |
| |
| |
| Changes to the build procedure |
| ------------------------------ |
| |
| * The Makefile supports some new targets: "make default" and "make |
| all". Both are by normally equivalent to "make python". |
| |
| * The Makefile no longer uses $> since it's not supported by all |
| versions of Make. |
| |
| * The header files now all contain #ifdef constructs designed to make |
| it safe to include the same header file twice, as well as support for |
| inclusion from C++ programs (automatic extern "C" { ... } added). |
| |
| |
| Freezing Python scripts |
| ----------------------- |
| |
| * There is now some support for "freezing" a Python script as a |
| stand-alone executable binary file. See the script |
| demo/scripts/freeze.py. It will require some site-specific tailoring |
| of the script to get this working, but is quite worthwhile if you write |
| Python code for other who may not have built and installed Python. |
| |
| |
| MS-DOS |
| ------ |
| |
| * A new MS-DOS port has been done, using MSC 6.0 (I believe). Thanks, |
| Marcel van der Peijl! This requires fewer compatibility hacks in |
| posixmodule.c. The executable is not yet available but will be soon |
| (check the mailing list). |
| |
| * The default PYTHONPATH has changed. |
| |
| |
| Changes for developers of extension modules |
| ------------------------------------------- |
| |
| * Read src/ChangeLog for full details. |
| |
| |
| SGI specific changes |
| -------------------- |
| |
| * Read src/ChangeLog for full details. |
| |
| |
| ================================== |
| ==> Release 0.9.8 (9 Jan 1993) <== |
| ================================== |
| |
| I claim no completeness here, but I've tried my best to scan the log |
| files throughout my source tree for interesting bits of news. A more |
| complete account of the changes is to be found in the various |
| ChangeLog files. See also "News for release 0.9.7beta" below if you're |
| still using release 0.9.6, and the file HISTORY if you have an even |
| older release. |
| |
| --Guido |
| |
| |
| Changes to the language proper |
| ------------------------------ |
| |
| There's only one big change: the conformance checking for function |
| argument lists (of user-defined functions only) is stricter. Earlier, |
| you could get away with the following: |
| |
| (a) define a function of one argument and call it with any |
| number of arguments; if the actual argument count wasn't |
| one, the function would receive a tuple containing the |
| arguments arguments (an empty tuple if there were none). |
| |
| (b) define a function of two arguments, and call it with more |
| than two arguments; if there were more than two arguments, |
| the second argument would be passed as a tuple containing |
| the second and further actual arguments. |
| |
| (Note that an argument (formal or actual) that is a tuple is counted as |
| one; these rules don't apply inside such tuples, only at the top level |
| of the argument list.) |
| |
| Case (a) was needed to accommodate variable-length argument lists; |
| there is now an explicit "varargs" feature (precede the last argument |
| with a '*'). Case (b) was needed for compatibility with old class |
| definitions: up to release 0.9.4 a method with more than one argument |
| had to be declared as "def meth(self, (arg1, arg2, ...)): ...". |
| Version 0.9.6 provide better ways to handle both casees, bot provided |
| backward compatibility; version 0.9.8 retracts the compatibility hacks |
| since they also cause confusing behavior if a function is called with |
| the wrong number of arguments. |
| |
| There's a script that helps converting classes that still rely on (b), |
| provided their methods' first argument is called "self": |
| demo/scripts/methfix.py. |
| |
| If this change breaks lots of code you have developed locally, try |
| #defining COMPAT_HACKS in ceval.c. |
| |
| (There's a third compatibility hack, which is the reverse of (a): if a |
| function is defined with two or more arguments, and called with a |
| single argument that is a tuple with just as many arguments, the items |
| of this tuple will be used as the arguments. Although this can (and |
| should!) be done using the built-in function apply() instead, it isn't |
| withdrawn yet.) |
| |
| |
| One minor change: comparing instance methods works like expected, so |
| that if x is an instance of a user-defined class and has a method m, |
| then (x.m==x.m) yields 1. |
| |
| |
| The following was already present in 0.9.7beta, but not explicitly |
| mentioned in the NEWS file: user-defined classes can now define types |
| that behave in almost allrespects like numbers. See |
| demo/classes/Rat.py for a simple example. |
| |
| |
| Changes to the build process |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| The Configure.py script and the Makefile has been made somewhat more |
| bullet-proof, after reports of (minor) trouble on certain platforms. |
| |
| There is now a script to patch Makefile and config.c to add a new |
| optional built-in module: Addmodule.sh. Read the script before using! |
| |
| Useing Addmodule.sh, all optional modules can now be configured at |
| compile time using Configure.py, so there are no modules left that |
| require dynamic loading. |
| |
| The Makefile has been fixed to make it easier to use with the VPATH |
| feature of some Make versions (e.g. SunOS). |
| |
| |
| Changes affecting portability |
| ----------------------------- |
| |
| Several minor portability problems have been solved, e.g. "malloc.h" |
| has been renamed to "mymalloc.h", "strdup.c" is no longer used, and |
| the system now tolerates malloc(0) returning 0. |
| |
| For dynamic loading on the SGI, Jack Jansen's dl 1.6 is now |
| distributed with Python. This solves several minor problems, in |
| particular scripts invoked using #! can now use dynamic loading. |
| |
| |
| Changes to the interpreter interface |
| ------------------------------------ |
| |
| On popular demand, there's finally a "profile" feature for interactive |
| use of the interpreter. If the environment variable $PYTHONSTARTUP is |
| set to the name of an existing file, Python statements in this file |
| are executed when the interpreter is started in interactive mode. |
| |
| There is a new clean-up mechanism, complementing try...finally: if you |
| assign a function object to sys.exitfunc, it will be called when |
| Python exits or receives a SIGTERM or SIGHUP signal. |
| |
| The interpreter is now generally assumed to live in |
| /usr/local/bin/python (as opposed to /usr/local/python). The script |
| demo/scripts/fixps.py will update old scripts in place (you can easily |
| modify it to do other similar changes). |
| |
| Most I/O that uses sys.stdin/stdout/stderr will now use any object |
| assigned to those names as long as the object supports readline() or |
| write() methods. |
| |
| The parser stack has been increased to 500 to accommodate more |
| complicated expressions (7 levels used to be the practical maximum, |
| it's now about 38). |
| |
| The limit on the size of the *run-time* stack has completely been |
| removed -- this means that tuple or list displays can contain any |
| number of elements (formerly more than 50 would crash the |
| interpreter). |
| |
| |
| Changes to existing built-in functions and methods |
| -------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| The built-in functions int(), long(), float(), oct() and hex() now |
| also apply to class instalces that define corresponding methods |
| (__int__ etc.). |
| |
| |
| New built-in functions |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| The new functions str() and repr() convert any object to a string. |
| The function repr(x) is in all respects equivalent to `x` -- some |
| people prefer a function for this. The function str(x) does the same |
| except if x is already a string -- then it returns x unchanged |
| (repr(x) adds quotes and escapes "funny" characters as octal escapes). |
| |
| The new function cmp(x, y) returns -1 if x<y, 0 if x==y, 1 if x>y. |
| |
| |
| Changes to general built-in modules |
| ----------------------------------- |
| |
| The time module's functions are more general: time() returns a |
| floating point number and sleep() accepts one. Their accuracies |
| depends on the precision of the system clock. Millisleep is no longer |
| needed (although it still exists for now), but millitimer is still |
| needed since on some systems wall clock time is only available with |
| seconds precision, while a source of more precise time exists that |
| isn't synchronized with the wall clock. (On UNIX systems that support |
| the BSD gettimeofday() function, time.time() is as time.millitimer().) |
| |
| The string representation of a file object now includes an address: |
| '<file 'filename', mode 'r' at #######>' where ###### is a hex number |
| (the object's address) to make it unique. |
| |
| New functions added to posix: nice(), setpgrp(), and if your system |
| supports them: setsid(), setpgid(), tcgetpgrp(), tcsetpgrp(). |
| |
| Improvements to the socket module: socket objects have new methods |
| getpeername() and getsockname(), and the {get,set}sockopt methods can |
| now get/set any kind of option using strings built with the new struct |
| module. And there's a new function fromfd() which creates a socket |
| object given a file descriptor (useful for servers started by inetd, |
| which have a socket connected to stdin and stdout). |
| |
| |
| Changes to SGI-specific built-in modules |
| ---------------------------------------- |
| |
| The FORMS library interface (fl) now requires FORMS 2.1a. Some new |
| functions have been added and some bugs have been fixed. |
| |
| Additions to al (audio library interface): added getname(), |
| getdefault() and getminmax(). |
| |
| The gl modules doesn't call "foreground()" when initialized (this |
| caused some problems) like it dit in 0.9.7beta (but not before). |
| There's a new gl function 'gversion() which returns a version string. |
| |
| The interface to sv (Indigo video interface) has totally changed. |
| (Sorry, still no documentation, but see the examples in |
| demo/sgi/{sv,video}.) |
| |
| |
| Changes to standard library modules |
| ----------------------------------- |
| |
| Most functions in module string are now much faster: they're actually |
| implemented in C. The module containing the C versions is called |
| "strop" but you should still import "string" since strop doesn't |
| provide all the interfaces defined in string (and strop may be renamed |
| to string when it is complete in a future release). |
| |
| string.index() now accepts an optional third argument giving an index |
| where to start searching in the first argument, so you can find second |
| and further occurrences (this is similar to the regular expression |
| functions in regex). |
| |
| The definition of what string.splitfields(anything, '') should return |
| is changed for the last time: it returns a singleton list containing |
| its whole first argument unchanged. This is compatible with |
| regsub.split() which also ignores empty delimiter matches. |
| |
| posixpath, macpath: added dirname() and normpath() (and basename() to |
| macpath). |
| |
| The mainloop module (for use with stdwin) can now demultiplex input |
| from other sources, as long as they can be polled with select(). |
| |
| |
| New built-in modules |
| -------------------- |
| |
| Module struct defines functions to pack/unpack values to/from strings |
| representing binary values in native byte order. |
| |
| Module strop implements C versions of many functions from string (see |
| above). |
| |
| Optional module fcntl defines interfaces to fcntl() and ioctl() -- |
| UNIX only. (Not yet properly documented -- see however src/fcntl.doc.) |
| |
| Optional module mpz defines an interface to an altaernative long |
| integer implementation, the GNU MPZ library. |
| |
| Optional module md5 uses the GNU MPZ library to calculate MD5 |
| signatures of strings. |
| |
| There are also optional new modules specific to SGI machines: imageop |
| defines some simple operations to images represented as strings; sv |
| interfaces to the Indigo video board; cl interfaces to the (yet |
| unreleased) compression library. |
| |
| |
| New standard library modules |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| (Unfortunately the following modules are not all documented; read the |
| sources to find out more about them!) |
| |
| autotest: run testall without showing any output unless it differs |
| from the expected output |
| |
| bisect: use bisection to insert or find an item in a sorted list |
| |
| colorsys: defines conversions between various color systems (e.g. RGB |
| <-> YUV) |
| |
| nntplib: a client interface to NNTP servers |
| |
| pipes: utility to construct pipeline from templates, e.g. for |
| conversion from one file format to another using several utilities. |
| |
| regsub: contains three functions that are more or less compatible with |
| awk functions of the same name: sub() and gsub() do string |
| substitution, split() splits a string using a regular expression to |
| define how separators are define. |
| |
| test_types: test operations on the built-in types of Python |
| |
| toaiff: convert various audio file formats to AIFF format |
| |
| tzparse: parse the TZ environment parameter (this may be less general |
| than it could be, let me know if you fix it). |
| |
| (Note that the obsolete module "path" no longer exists.) |
| |
| |
| New SGI-specific library modules |
| -------------------------------- |
| |
| CL: constants for use with the built-in compression library interface (cl) |
| |
| Queue: a multi-producer, multi-consumer queue class implemented for |
| use with the built-in thread module |
| |
| SOCKET: constants for use with built-in module socket, e.g. to set/get |
| socket options. This is SGI-specific because the constants to be |
| passed are system-dependent. You can generate a version for your own |
| system by running the script demo/scripts/h2py.py with |
| /usr/include/sys/socket.h as input. |
| |
| cddb: interface to the database used the the CD player |
| |
| torgb: convert various image file types to rgb format (requires pbmplus) |
| |
| |
| New demos |
| --------- |
| |
| There's an experimental interface to define Sun RPC clients and |
| servers in demo/rpc. |
| |
| There's a collection of interfaces to WWW, WAIS and Gopher (both |
| Python classes and program providing a user interface) in demo/www. |
| This includes a program texi2html.py which converts texinfo files to |
| HTML files (the format used hy WWW). |
| |
| The ibrowse demo has moved from demo/stdwin/ibrowse to demo/ibrowse. |
| |
| For SGI systems, there's a whole collection of programs and classes |
| that make use of the Indigo video board in demo/sgi/{sv,video}. This |
| represents a significant amount of work that we're giving away! |
| |
| There are demos "rsa" and "md5test" that exercise the mpz and md5 |
| modules, respectively. The rsa demo is a complete implementation of |
| the RSA public-key cryptosystem! |
| |
| A bunch of games and examples submitted by Stoffel Erasmus have been |
| included in demo/stoffel. |
| |
| There are miscellaneous new files in some existing demo |
| subdirectories: classes/bitvec.py, scripts/{fixps,methfix}.py, |
| sgi/al/cmpaf.py, sockets/{mcast,gopher}.py. |
| |
| There are also many minor changes to existing files, but I'm too lazy |
| to run a diff and note the differences -- you can do this yourself if |
| you save the old distribution's demos. One highlight: the |
| stdwin/python.py demo is much improved! |
| |
| |
| Changes to the documentation |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| The LaTeX source for the library uses different macros to enable it to |
| be converted to texinfo, and from there to INFO or HTML format so it |
| can be browsed as a hypertext. The net result is that you can now |
| read the Python library documentation in Emacs info mode! |
| |
| |
| Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers |
| ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| The function strdup() no longer exists (it was used only in one places |
| and is somewhat of a a portability problem sice some systems have the |
| same function in their C library. |
| |
| The functions NEW() and RENEW() allocate one spare byte to guard |
| against a NULL return from malloc(0) being taken for an error, but |
| this should not be relied upon. |
| |
| |
| ========================= |
| ==> Release 0.9.7beta <== |
| ========================= |
| |
| |
| Changes to the language proper |
| ------------------------------ |
| |
| User-defined classes can now implement operations invoked through |
| special syntax, such as x[i] or `x` by defining methods named |
| __getitem__(self, i) or __repr__(self), etc. |
| |
| |
| Changes to the build process |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| Instead of extensive manual editing of the Makefile to select |
| compile-time options, you can now run a Configure.py script. |
| The Makefile as distributed builds a minimal interpreter sufficient to |
| run Configure.py. See also misc/BUILD |
| |
| The Makefile now includes more "utility" targets, e.g. install and |
| tags/TAGS |
| |
| Using the provided strtod.c and strtol.c are now separate options, as |
| on the Sun the provided strtod.c dumps core :-( |
| |
| The regex module is now an option chosen by the Makefile, since some |
| (old) C compilers choke on regexpr.c |
| |
| |
| Changes affecting portability |
| ----------------------------- |
| |
| You need STDWIN version 0.9.7 (released 30 June 1992) for the stdwin |
| interface |
| |
| Dynamic loading is now supported for Sun (and other non-COFF systems) |
| throug dld-3.2.3, as well as for SGI (a new version of Jack Jansen's |
| DL is out, 1.4) |
| |
| The system-dependent code for the use of the select() system call is |
| moved to one file: myselect.h |
| |
| Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen, the code should now port cleanly to the |
| SEQUENT |
| |
| |
| Changes to the interpreter interface |
| ------------------------------------ |
| |
| The interpretation of $PYTHONPATH in the environment is different: it |
| is inserted in front of the default path instead of overriding it |
| |
| |
| Changes to existing built-in functions and methods |
| -------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| List objects now support an optional argument to their sort() method, |
| which is a comparison function similar to qsort(3) in C |
| |
| File objects now have a method fileno(), used by the new select module |
| (see below) |
| |
| |
| New built-in function |
| --------------------- |
| |
| coerce(x, y): take two numbers and return a tuple containing them |
| both converted to a common type |
| |
| |
| Changes to built-in modules |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| sys: fixed core dumps in settrace() and setprofile() |
| |
| socket: added socket methods setsockopt() and getsockopt(); and |
| fileno(), used by the new select module (see below) |
| |
| stdwin: added fileno() == connectionnumber(), in support of new module |
| select (see below) |
| |
| posix: added get{eg,eu,g,u}id(); waitpid() is now a separate function. |
| |
| gl: added qgetfd() |
| |
| fl: added several new functions, fixed several obscure bugs, adapted |
| to FORMS 2.1 |
| |
| |
| Changes to standard modules |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| posixpath: changed implementation of ismount() |
| |
| string: atoi() no longer mistakes leading zero for octal number |
| |
| ... |
| |
| |
| New built-in modules |
| -------------------- |
| |
| Modules marked "dynamic only" are not configured at compile time but |
| can be loaded dynamically. You need to turn on the DL or DLD option in |
| the Makefile for support dynamic loading of modules (this requires |
| external code). |
| |
| select: interfaces to the BSD select() system call |
| |
| dbm: interfaces to the (new) dbm library (dynamic only) |
| |
| nis: interfaces to some NIS functions (aka yellow pages) |
| |
| thread: limited form of multiple threads (sgi only) |
| |
| audioop: operations useful for audio programs, e.g. u-LAW and ADPCM |
| coding (dynamic only) |
| |
| cd: interface to Indigo SCSI CDROM player audio library (sgi only) |
| |
| jpeg: read files in JPEG format (dynamic only, sgi only; needs |
| external code) |
| |
| imgfile: read SGI image files (dynamic only, sgi only) |
| |
| sunaudiodev: interface to sun's /dev/audio (dynamic only, sun only) |
| |
| sv: interface to Indigo video library (sgi only) |
| |
| pc: a minimal set of MS-DOS interfaces (MS-DOS only) |
| |
| rotor: encryption, by Lance Ellinghouse (dynamic only) |
| |
| |
| New standard modules |
| -------------------- |
| |
| Not all these modules are documented. Read the source: |
| lib/<modulename>.py. Sometimes a file lib/<modulename>.doc contains |
| additional documentation. |
| |
| imghdr: recognizes image file headers |
| |
| sndhdr: recognizes sound file headers |
| |
| profile: print run-time statistics of Python code |
| |
| readcd, cdplayer: companion modules for built-in module cd (sgi only) |
| |
| emacs: interface to Emacs using py-connect.el (see below). |
| |
| SOCKET: symbolic constant definitions for socket options |
| |
| SUNAUDIODEV: symbolic constant definitions for sunaudiodef (sun only) |
| |
| SV: symbolic constat definitions for sv (sgi only) |
| |
| CD: symbolic constat definitions for cd (sgi only) |
| |
| |
| New demos |
| --------- |
| |
| scripts/pp.py: execute Python as a filter with a Perl-like command |
| line interface |
| |
| classes/: examples using the new class features |
| |
| threads/: examples using the new thread module |
| |
| sgi/cd/: examples using the new cd module |
| |
| |
| Changes to the documentation |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| The last-minute syntax changes of release 0.9.6 are now reflected |
| everywhere in the manuals |
| |
| The reference manual has a new section (3.2) on implementing new kinds |
| of numbers, sequences or mappings with user classes |
| |
| Classes are now treated extensively in the tutorial (chapter 9) |
| |
| Slightly restructured the system-dependent chapters of the library |
| manual |
| |
| The file misc/EXTENDING incorporates documentation for mkvalue() and |
| a new section on error handling |
| |
| The files misc/CLASSES and misc/ERRORS are no longer necessary |
| |
| The doc/Makefile now creates PostScript files automatically |
| |
| |
| Miscellaneous changes |
| --------------------- |
| |
| Incorporated Tim Peters' changes to python-mode.el, it's now version |
| 1.06 |
| |
| A python/Emacs bridge (provided by Terrence M. Brannon) lets a Python |
| program running in an Emacs buffer execute Emacs lisp code. The |
| necessary Python code is in lib/emacs.py. The Emacs code is |
| misc/py-connect.el (it needs some external Emacs lisp code) |
| |
| |
| Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers |
| ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| New service function mkvalue() to construct a Python object from C |
| values according to a "format" string a la getargs() |
| |
| Most functions from pythonmain.c moved to new pythonrun.c which is |
| in libpython.a. This should make embedded versions of Python easier |
| |
| ceval.h is split in eval.h (which needs compile.h and only declares |
| eval_code) and ceval.h (which doesn't need compile.hand declares the |
| rest) |
| |
| ceval.h defines macros BGN_SAVE / END_SAVE for use with threads (to |
| improve the parallellism of multi-threaded programs by letting other |
| Python code run when a blocking system call or something similar is |
| made) |
| |
| In structmember.[ch], new member types BYTE, CHAR and unsigned |
| variants have been added |
| |
| New file xxmodule.c is a template for new extension modules. |
| |
| |
| ================================== |
| ==> RELEASE 0.9.6 (6 Apr 1992) <== |
| ================================== |
| |
| Misc news in 0.9.6: |
| - Restructured the misc subdirectory |
| - Reference manual completed, library manual much extended (with indexes!) |
| - the GNU Readline library is now distributed standard with Python |
| - the script "../demo/scripts/classfix.py" fixes Python modules using old |
| class syntax |
| - Emacs python-mode.el (was python.el) vastly improved (thanks, Tim!) |
| - Because of the GNU copyleft business I am not using the GNU regular |
| expression implementation but a free re-implementation by Tatu Ylonen |
| that recently appeared in comp.sources.misc (Bravo, Tatu!) |
| |
| New features in 0.9.6: |
| - stricter try stmt syntax: cannot mix except and finally clauses on 1 try |
| - New module 'os' supplants modules 'mac' and 'posix' for most cases; |
| module 'path' is replaced by 'os.path' |
| - os.path.split() return value differs from that of old path.split() |
| - sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback are set to the exception |
| currently being handled |
| - sys.last_type, sys.last_value, sys.last_traceback remember last unhandled |
| exception |
| - New function string.expandtabs() expands tabs in a string |
| - Added times() interface to posix (user & sys time of process & children) |
| - Added uname() interface to posix (returns OS type, hostname, etc.) |
| - New built-in function execfile() is like exec() but from a file |
| - Functions exec() and eval() are less picky about whitespace/newlines |
| - New built-in functions getattr() and setattr() access arbitrary attributes |
| - More generic argument handling in built-in functions (see "./EXTENDING") |
| - Dynamic loading of modules written in C or C++ (see "./DYNLOAD") |
| - Division and modulo for long and plain integers with negative operands |
| have changed; a/b is now floor(float(a)/float(b)) and a%b is defined |
| as a-(a/b)*b. So now the outcome of divmod(a,b) is the same as |
| (a/b, a%b) for integers. For floats, % is also changed, but of course |
| / is unchanged, and divmod(x,y) does not yield (x/y, x%y)... |
| - A function with explicit variable-length argument list can be declared |
| like this: def f(*args): ...; or even like this: def f(a, b, *rest): ... |
| - Code tracing and profiling features have been added, and two source |
| code debuggers are provided in the library (pdb.py, tty-oriented, |
| and wdb, window-oriented); you can now step through Python programs! |
| See sys.settrace() and sys.setprofile(), and "../lib/pdb.doc" |
| - '==' is now the only equality operator; "../demo/scripts/eqfix.py" is |
| a script that fixes old Python modules |
| - Plain integer right shift now uses sign extension |
| - Long integer shift/mask operations now simulate 2's complement |
| to give more useful results for negative operands |
| - Changed/added range checks for long/plain integer shifts |
| - Options found after "-c command" are now passed to the command in sys.argv |
| (note subtle incompatiblity with "python -c command -- -options"!) |
| - Module stdwin is better protected against touching objects after they've |
| been closed; menus can now also be closed explicitly |
| - Stdwin now uses its own exception (stdwin.error) |
| |
| New features in 0.9.5 (released as Macintosh application only, 2 Jan 1992): |
| - dictionary objects can now be compared properly; e.g., {}=={} is true |
| - new exception SystemExit causes termination if not caught; |
| it is raised by sys.exit() so that 'finally' clauses can clean up, |
| and it may even be caught. It does work interactively! |
| - new module "regex" implements GNU Emacs style regular expressions; |
| module "regexp" is rewritten in Python for backward compatibility |
| - formal parameter lists may contain trailing commas |
| |
| Bugs fixed in 0.9.6: |
| - assigning to or deleting a list item with a negative index dumped core |
| - divmod(-10L,5L) returned (-3L, 5L) instead of (-2L, 0L) |
| |
| Bugs fixed in 0.9.5: |
| - masking operations involving negative long integers gave wrong results |
| |
| |
| =================================== |
| ==> RELEASE 0.9.4 (24 Dec 1991) <== |
| =================================== |
| |
| - new function argument handling (see below) |
| - built-in apply(func, args) means func(args[0], args[1], ...) |
| - new, more refined exceptions |
| - new exception string values (NameError = 'NameError' etc.) |
| - better checking for math exceptions |
| - for sequences (string/tuple/list), x[-i] is now equivalent to x[len(x)-i] |
| - fixed list assignment bug: "a[1:1] = a" now works correctly |
| - new class syntax, without extraneous parentheses |
| - new 'global' statement to assign global variables from within a function |
| |
| |
| New class syntax |
| ---------------- |
| |
| You can now declare a base class as follows: |
| |
| class B: # Was: class B(): |
| def some_method(self): ... |
| ... |
| |
| and a derived class thusly: |
| |
| class D(B): # Was: class D() = B(): |
| def another_method(self, arg): ... |
| |
| Multiple inheritance looks like this: |
| |
| class M(B, D): # Was: class M() = B(), D(): |
| def this_or_that_method(self, arg): ... |
| |
| The old syntax is still accepted by Python 0.9.4, but will disappear |
| in Python 1.0 (to be posted to comp.sources). |
| |
| |
| New 'global' statement |
| ---------------------- |
| |
| Every now and then you have a global variable in a module that you |
| want to change from within a function in that module -- say, a count |
| of calls to a function, or an option flag, etc. Until now this was |
| not directly possible. While several kludges are known that |
| circumvent the problem, and often the need for a global variable can |
| be avoided by rewriting the module as a class, this does not always |
| lead to clearer code. |
| |
| The 'global' statement solves this dilemma. Its occurrence in a |
| function body means that, for the duration of that function, the |
| names listed there refer to global variables. For instance: |
| |
| total = 0.0 |
| count = 0 |
| |
| def add_to_total(amount): |
| global total, count |
| total = total + amount |
| count = count + 1 |
| |
| 'global' must be repeated in each function where it is needed. The |
| names listed in a 'global' statement must not be used in the function |
| before the statement is reached. |
| |
| Remember that you don't need to use 'global' if you only want to *use* |
| a global variable in a function; nor do you need ot for assignments to |
| parts of global variables (e.g., list or dictionary items or |
| attributes of class instances). This has not changed; in fact |
| assignment to part of a global variable was the standard workaround. |
| |
| |
| New exceptions |
| -------------- |
| |
| Several new exceptions have been defined, to distinguish more clearly |
| between different types of errors. |
| |
| name meaning was |
| |
| AttributeError reference to non-existing attribute NameError |
| IOError unexpected I/O error RuntimeError |
| ImportError import of non-existing module or name NameError |
| IndexError invalid string, tuple or list index RuntimeError |
| KeyError key not in dictionary RuntimeError |
| OverflowError numeric overflow RuntimeError |
| SyntaxError invalid syntax RuntimeError |
| ValueError invalid argument value RuntimeError |
| ZeroDivisionError division by zero RuntimeError |
| |
| The string value of each exception is now its name -- this makes it |
| easier to experimentally find out which operations raise which |
| exceptions; e.g.: |
| |
| >>> KeyboardInterrupt |
| 'KeyboardInterrupt' |
| >>> |
| |
| |
| New argument passing semantics |
| ------------------------------ |
| |
| Off-line discussions with Steve Majewski and Daniel LaLiberte have |
| convinced me that Python's parameter mechanism could be changed in a |
| way that made both of them happy (I hope), kept me happy, fixed a |
| number of outstanding problems, and, given some backward compatibility |
| provisions, would only break a very small amount of existing code -- |
| probably all mine anyway. In fact I suspect that most Python users |
| will hardly notice the difference. And yet it has cost me at least |
| one sleepless night to decide to make the change... |
| |
| Philosophically, the change is quite radical (to me, anyway): a |
| function is no longer called with either zero or one argument, which |
| is a tuple if there appear to be more arguments. Every function now |
| has an argument list containing 0, 1 or more arguments. This list is |
| always implemented as a tuple, and it is a (run-time) error if a |
| function is called with a different number of arguments than expected. |
| |
| What's the difference? you may ask. The answer is, very little unless |
| you want to write variadic functions -- functions that may be called |
| with a variable number of arguments. Formerly, you could write a |
| function that accepted one or more arguments with little trouble, but |
| writing a function that could be called with either 0 or 1 argument |
| (or more) was next to impossible. This is now a piece of cake: you |
| can simply declare an argument that receives the entire argument |
| tuple, and check its length -- it will be of size 0 if there are no |
| arguments. |
| |
| Another anomaly of the old system was the way multi-argument methods |
| (in classes) had to be declared, e.g.: |
| |
| class Point(): |
| def init(self, (x, y, color)): ... |
| def setcolor(self, color): ... |
| dev moveto(self, (x, y)): ... |
| def draw(self): ... |
| |
| Using the new scheme there is no need to enclose the method arguments |
| in an extra set of parentheses, so the above class could become: |
| |
| class Point: |
| def init(self, x, y, color): ... |
| def setcolor(self, color): ... |
| dev moveto(self, x, y): ... |
| def draw(self): ... |
| |
| That is, the equivalence rule between methods and functions has |
| changed so that now p.moveto(x,y) is equivalent to Point.moveto(p,x,y) |
| while formerly it was equivalent to Point.moveto(p,(x,y)). |
| |
| A special backward compatibility rule makes that the old version also |
| still works: whenever a function with exactly two arguments (at the top |
| level) is called with more than two arguments, the second and further |
| arguments are packed into a tuple and passed as the second argument. |
| This rule is invoked independently of whether the function is actually a |
| method, so there is a slight chance that some erroneous calls of |
| functions expecting two arguments with more than that number of |
| arguments go undetected at first -- when the function tries to use the |
| second argument it may find it is a tuple instead of what was expected. |
| Note that this rule will be removed from future versions of the |
| language; it is a backward compatibility provision *only*. |
| |
| Two other rules and a new built-in function handle conversion between |
| tuples and argument lists: |
| |
| Rule (a): when a function with more than one argument is called with a |
| single argument that is a tuple of the right size, the tuple's items |
| are used as arguments. |
| |
| Rule (b): when a function with exactly one argument receives no |
| arguments or more than one, that one argument will receive a tuple |
| containing the arguments (the tuple will be empty if there were no |
| arguments). |
| |
| |
| A new built-in function, apply(), was added to support functions that |
| need to call other functions with a constructed argument list. The call |
| |
| apply(function, tuple) |
| |
| is equivalent to |
| |
| function(tuple[0], tuple[1], ..., tuple[len(tuple)-1]) |
| |
| |
| While no new argument syntax was added in this phase, it would now be |
| quite sensible to add explicit syntax to Python for default argument |
| values (as in C++ or Modula-3), or a "rest" argument to receive the |
| remaining arguments of a variable-length argument list. |
| |
| |
| ======================================================== |
| ==> Release 0.9.3 (never made available outside CWI) <== |
| ======================================================== |
| |
| - string sys.version shows current version (also printed on interactive entry) |
| - more detailed exceptions, e.g., IOError, ZeroDivisionError, etc. |
| - 'global' statement to declare module-global variables assigned in functions. |
| - new class declaration syntax: class C(Base1, Base2, ...): suite |
| (the old syntax is still accepted -- be sure to convert your classes now!) |
| - C shifting and masking operators: << >> ~ & ^ | (for ints and longs). |
| - C comparison operators: == != (the old = and <> remain valid). |
| - floating point numbers may now start with a period (e.g., .14). |
| - definition of integer division tightened (always truncates towards zero). |
| - new builtins hex(x), oct(x) return hex/octal string from (long) integer. |
| - new list method l.count(x) returns the number of occurrences of x in l. |
| - new SGI module: al (Indigo and 4D/35 audio library). |
| - the FORMS interface (modules fl and FL) now uses FORMS 2.0 |
| - module gl: added lrect{read,write}, rectzoom and pixmode; |
| added (non-GL) functions (un)packrect. |
| - new socket method: s.allowbroadcast(flag). |
| - many objects support __dict__, __methods__ or __members__. |
| - dir() lists anything that has __dict__. |
| - class attributes are no longer read-only. |
| - classes support __bases__, instances support __class__ (and __dict__). |
| - divmod() now also works for floats. |
| - fixed obscure bug in eval('1 '). |
| |
| |
| =================================== |
| ==> Release 0.9.2 (Autumn 1991) <== |
| =================================== |
| |
| Highlights |
| ---------- |
| |
| - tutorial now (almost) complete; library reference reorganized |
| - new syntax: continue statement; semicolons; dictionary constructors; |
| restrictions on blank lines in source files removed |
| - dramatically improved module load time through precompiled modules |
| - arbitrary precision integers: compute 2 to the power 1000 and more... |
| - arithmetic operators now accept mixed type operands, e.g., 3.14/4 |
| - more operations on list: remove, index, reverse; repetition |
| - improved/new file operations: readlines, seek, tell, flush, ... |
| - process management added to the posix module: fork/exec/wait/kill etc. |
| - BSD socket operations (with example servers and clients!) |
| - many new STDWIN features (color, fonts, polygons, ...) |
| - new SGI modules: font manager and FORMS library interface |
| |
| |
| Extended list of changes in 0.9.2 |
| --------------------------------- |
| |
| Here is a summary of the most important user-visible changes in 0.9.2, |
| in somewhat arbitrary order. Changes in later versions are listed in |
| the "highlights" section above. |
| |
| |
| 1. Changes to the interpreter proper |
| |
| - Simple statements can now be separated by semicolons. |
| If you write "if t: s1; s2", both s1 and s2 are executed |
| conditionally. |
| - The 'continue' statement was added, with semantics as in C. |
| - Dictionary displays are now allowed on input: {key: value, ...}. |
| - Blank lines and lines bearing only a comment no longer need to |
| be indented properly. (A completely empty line still ends a multi- |
| line statement interactively.) |
| - Mixed arithmetic is supported, 1 compares equal to 1.0, etc. |
| - Option "-c command" to execute statements from the command line |
| - Compiled versions of modules are cached in ".pyc" files, giving a |
| dramatic improvement of start-up time |
| - Other, smaller speed improvements, e.g., extracting characters from |
| strings, looking up single-character keys, and looking up global |
| variables |
| - Interrupting a print operation raises KeyboardInterrupt instead of |
| only cancelling the print operation |
| - Fixed various portability problems (it now passes gcc with only |
| warnings -- more Standard C compatibility will be provided in later |
| versions) |
| - Source is prepared for porting to MS-DOS |
| - Numeric constants are now checked for overflow (this requires |
| standard-conforming strtol() and strtod() functions; a correct |
| strtol() implementation is provided, but the strtod() provided |
| relies on atof() for everything, including error checking |
| |
| |
| 2. Changes to the built-in types, functions and modules |
| |
| - New module socket: interface to BSD socket primitives |
| - New modules pwd and grp: access the UNIX password and group databases |
| - (SGI only:) New module "fm" interfaces to the SGI IRIX Font Manager |
| - (SGI only:) New module "fl" interfaces to Mark Overmars' FORMS library |
| - New numeric type: long integer, for unlimited precision |
| - integer constants suffixed with 'L' or 'l' are long integers |
| - new built-in function long(x) converts int or float to long |
| - int() and float() now also convert from long integers |
| - New built-in function: |
| - pow(x, y) returns x to the power y |
| - New operation and methods for lists: |
| - l*n returns a new list consisting of n concatenated copies of l |
| - l.remove(x) removes the first occurrence of the value x from l |
| - l.index(x) returns the index of the first occurrence of x in l |
| - l.reverse() reverses l in place |
| - New operation for tuples: |
| - t*n returns a tuple consisting of n concatenated copies of t |
| - Improved file handling: |
| - f.readline() no longer restricts the line length, is faster, |
| and isn't confused by null bytes; same for raw_input() |
| - f.read() without arguments reads the entire (rest of the) file |
| - mixing of print and sys.stdout.write() has different effect |
| - New methods for files: |
| - f.readlines() returns a list containing the lines of the file, |
| as read with f.readline() |
| - f.flush(), f.tell(), f.seek() call their stdio counterparts |
| - f.isatty() tests for "tty-ness" |
| - New posix functions: |
| - _exit(), exec(), fork(), getpid(), getppid(), kill(), wait() |
| - popen() returns a file object connected to a pipe |
| - utime() replaces utimes() (the latter is not a POSIX name) |
| - New stdwin features, including: |
| - font handling |
| - color drawing |
| - scroll bars made optional |
| - polygons |
| - filled and xor shapes |
| - text editing objects now have a 'settext' method |
| |
| |
| 3. Changes to the standard library |
| |
| - Name change: the functions path.cat and macpath.cat are now called |
| path.join and macpath.join |
| - Added new modules: formatter, mutex, persist, sched, mainloop |
| - Added some modules and functionality to the "widget set" (which is |
| still under development, so please bear with me): |
| DirList, FormSplit, TextEdit, WindowSched |
| - Fixed module testall to work non-interactively |
| - Module string: |
| - added functions join() and joinfields() |
| - fixed center() to work correct and make it "transitive" |
| - Obsolete modules were removed: util, minmax |
| - Some modules were moved to the demo directory |
| |
| |
| 4. Changes to the demonstration programs |
| |
| - Added new useful scipts: byteyears, eptags, fact, from, lfact, |
| objgraph, pdeps, pi, primes, ptags, which |
| - Added a bunch of socket demos |
| - Doubled the speed of ptags |
| - Added new stdwin demos: microedit, miniedit |
| - Added a windowing interface to the Python interpreter: python (most |
| useful on the Mac) |
| - Added a browser for Emacs info files: demo/stdwin/ibrowse |
| (yes, I plan to put all STDWIN and Python documentation in texinfo |
| form in the future) |
| |
| |
| 5. Other changes to the distribution |
| |
| - An Emacs Lisp file "python.el" is provided to facilitate editing |
| Python programs in GNU Emacs (slightly improved since posted to |
| gnu.emacs.sources) |
| - Some info on writing an extension in C is provided |
| - Some info on building Python on non-UNIX platforms is provided |
| |
| |
| ===================================== |
| ==> Release 0.9.1 (February 1991) <== |
| ===================================== |
| |
| - Micro changes only |
| - Added file "patchlevel.h" |
| |
| |
| ===================================== |
| ==> Release 0.9.0 (February 1991) <== |
| ===================================== |
| |
| Original posting to alt.sources. |