| What's new in this release? |
| =========================== |
| |
| Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.4. The |
| sections are now in a more useful order: 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 1.5.1 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). |
| |
| 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. |
| |
| Documentation |
| ------------- |
| |
| - 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/.) |
| |
| - Doc strings have been added to many modules: socket, signal, select, |
| time, thread, sys, __builtin__. 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. |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - Other miscellaneous improvements to the configure script and |
| Makefiles. |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - The test suite now uses a different sound sample. |
| |
| Built-in functions and exceptions |
| --------------------------------- |
| |
| - 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.) |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| Built-in types and statements |
| ----------------------------- |
| |
| - Changes to comparisons: numbers now compare 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 :-( ). |
| |
| - New, better performing sort() method for list objects. |
| |
| - 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 (this could cause core dumps). |
| |
| - Fix a bug in the overflow checking when converting a Python long to |
| a C long (failed to convert -2147483648L, and other spurious bugs). |
| |
| - Allow assignment to some attributes of function objects: func_code, |
| func_defaults and func_doc / __doc__. (With type checks except for |
| __doc__ / func_doc .) |
| |
| - 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). |
| |
| Library modules |
| --------------- |
| |
| - New tests (in Lib/test): reperf.py (regular expression benchmark), |
| sortperf.py (list sorting benchmark), test_MimeWriter.py (test case |
| for the MimeWriter module). |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - The smtplib.py module now supports ESMTP and has improved standard |
| compliance, for picky servers. |
| |
| - Some fixes to gzip.py. In particular, the readlines() method now |
| returns the lines *with* trailing newline characters, like readlines() |
| of regular file objects. |
| |
| - 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). |
| |
| - 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). |
| |
| - Generalized test/regrtest.py so that it is useful for testing other |
| packages. |
| |
| - 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 pdb.py, support for setting breaks on files/modules that haven't |
| been loaded yet. |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - 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). |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - 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__'. |
| |
| - The ihooks.py module now understands package imports. |
| |
| - Some restructuring and generalization done to cmd.py. |
| |
| - Some restructuring and generalization done to multifile.py. |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - Improved imaplib.py. |
| |
| - In code.py, add a class that subsumes Fredrik Lundh's |
| PythonInterpreter class. The interact() function now uses this. |
| |
| - In multifile.py, support a seekable flag. |
| |
| - Fixed UDP support in SocketServer.py, which never worked. |
| |
| - In rlcompleter.py, in completer(), return None instead of raising an |
| IndexError when there are no more completions left. |
| |
| - 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!). |
| |
| - The gzip.py module didn't work together with cPickle. Fixed. |
| |
| - Fixed a small bug in CGIHTTPServer.py. |
| |
| - 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.) |
| |
| Extension modules |
| ----------------- |
| |
| - In the socket module: new function gethostbyname_ex(). Also, don't |
| use #ifdef to test for some symbols that are enums on some platforms |
| (and should exist everywhere). |
| |
| - Added some of the "wait status inspection" macros as functions: |
| WEXITSTATUS(), WIFEXITED(), WIFSIGNALED(), WIFSTOPPED(), WSTOPSIG(), |
| WTERMSIG(). |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - In the termios module, in tcsetattr(), initialize the structure vy |
| calling tcgetattr(). |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - 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". |
| |
| - In the syslog module, make the default facility more intuitive |
| (matching the docs). |
| |
| 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 |
| ------- |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - The project files have been moved so they are distributed in the |
| same subdirectory (PCbuild) 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/. |
| |
| - os.environ is now all uppercase, but accesses are case insensitive. |
| |
| - 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?). |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - In the select module, put the (huge) file descriptor arrays on the heap. |
| |
| - The getpass module now raises KeyboardInterrupt when it sees ^C. |
| |
| - Changes to os.py: os.environ now upcases keys before storing them on |
| Windows, DOS and OS/2. |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - Several improvements to freeze (mostly, but not exclusively for |
| Windows). |
| |
| - Moved the VC++ project files and the WISE installer script from PC |
| to PCbuild. |
| |
| - 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). |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - 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++. |
| |
| - Fixed a very old bug in the parsing of "O?" format specifiers. |
| |
| - Added a table of WSA error codes to socket.py. |
| |
| - Removed samefile(), sameopenfile(), samestat() from os.path (aka |
| ntpath.py) -- these cannot be made to work reliably (at least I |
| wouldn't know how). |
| |
| 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 APIs for conversion between Python longs and C 'long long' if |
| your compiler supports it. |
| |
| - 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). |
| |
| - Changes to PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Lis(t) to use the |
| length of a sequence only as a hint -- if an IndexError happens |
| earlier, take that. (Formerly, this was considered an error.) |
| |
| - 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.) |
| |
| - 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). |
| |
| - 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. |
| |
| - 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 macro PyList_SET_ITEM(). |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.5 to 1.5.1 |
| ================= |
| |
| General |
| ------- |
| |
| - The documentation is now unbundled. It has also been extensively |
| modified (mostly to implement a new and more uniform formatting |
| style). We figure that most people will prefer to download one of the |
| preformatted documentation sets (HTML, PostScript or PDF) and that |
| only a minority have a need for the LaTeX or FrameMaker sources. Of |
| course, the unbundled documentation sources still released -- just not |
| in the same archive file, and perhaps not on the same date. |
| |
| - All bugs noted on the errors page (and many unnoted) are fixed. All |
| new bugs take their places. |
| |
| - No longer a core dump when attempting to print (or repr(), or str()) |
| a list or dictionary that contains an instance of itself; instead, the |
| recursive entry is printed as [...] or {...}. See Py_ReprEnter() and |
| Py_ReprLeave() below. Comparisons of such objects still go beserk, |
| since this requires a different kind of fix; fortunately, this is a |
| less common scenario in practice. |
| |
| Syntax change |
| ------------- |
| |
| - The raise statement can now be used without arguments, to re-raise |
| a previously set exception. This should be used after catching an |
| exception with an except clause only, either in the except clause or |
| later in the same function. |
| |
| Import and module handling |
| -------------------------- |
| |
| - The implementation of import has changed to use a mutex (when |
| threading is supported). This means that when two threads |
| simultaneously import the same module, the import statements are |
| serialized. Recursive imports are not affected. |
| |
| - Rewrote the finalization code almost completely, to be much more |
| careful with the order in which modules are destroyed. Destructors |
| will now generally be able to reference built-in names such as None |
| without trouble. |
| |
| - Case-insensitive platforms such as Mac and Windows require the case |
| of a module's filename to match the case of the module name as |
| specified in the import statement (see below). |
| |
| - The code for figuring out the default path now distinguishes between |
| files, modules, executable files, and directories. When expecting a |
| module, we also look for the .pyc or .pyo file. |
| |
| Parser/tokenizer changes |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| - The tokenizer can now warn you when your source code mixes tabs and |
| spaces for indentation in a manner that depends on how much a tab is |
| worth in spaces. Use "python -t" or "python -v" to enable this |
| option. Use "python -tt" to turn the warnings into errors. (See also |
| tabnanny.py and tabpolice.py below.) |
| |
| - Return unsigned characters from tok_nextc(), so '\377' isn't |
| mistaken for an EOF character. |
| |
| - Fixed two pernicious bugs in the tokenizer that only affected AIX. |
| One was actually a general bug that was triggered by AIX's smaller I/O |
| buffer size. The other was a bug in the AIX optimizer's loop |
| unrolling code; swapping two statements made the problem go away. |
| |
| Tools, demos and miscellaneous files |
| ------------------------------------ |
| |
| - There's a new version of Misc/python-mode.el (the Emacs mode for |
| Python) which is much smarter about guessing the indentation style |
| used in a particular file. Lots of other cool features too! |
| |
| - There are two new tools in Tools/scripts: tabnanny.py and |
| tabpolice.py, implementing two different ways of checking whether a |
| file uses indentation in a way that is sensitive to the interpretation |
| of a tab. The preferred module is tabnanny.py (by Tim Peters). |
| |
| - Some new demo programs: |
| |
| Demo/tkinter/guido/paint.py -- Dave Mitchell |
| Demo/sockets/unixserver.py -- Piet van Oostrum |
| |
| |
| - Much better freeze support. The freeze script can now freeze |
| hierarchical module names (with a corresponding change to import.c), |
| and has a few extra options (e.g. to suppress freezing specific |
| modules). It also does much more on Windows NT. |
| |
| - Version 1.0 of the faq wizard is included (only very small changes |
| since version 0.9.0). |
| |
| - New feature for the ftpmirror script: when removing local files |
| (i.e., only when -r is used), do a recursive delete. |
| |
| Configuring and building Python |
| ------------------------------- |
| |
| - Get rid of the check for -linet -- recent Sequent Dynix systems don't |
| need this any more and apparently it screws up their configuration. |
| |
| - Some changes because gcc on SGI doesn't support '-all'. |
| |
| - Changed the build rules to use $(LIBRARY) instead of |
| -L.. -lpython$(VERSION) |
| since the latter trips up the SunOS 4.1.x linker (sigh). |
| |
| - Fix the bug where the '# dgux is broken' comment in the Makefile |
| tripped over Make on some platforms. |
| |
| - Changes for AIX: install the python.exp file; properly use |
| $(srcdir); the makexp_aix script now removes C++ entries of the form |
| Class::method. |
| |
| - Deleted some Makefile targets only used by the (long obsolete) |
| gMakefile hacks. |
| |
| Extension modules |
| ----------------- |
| |
| - Performance and threading improvements to the socket and bsddb |
| modules, by Christopher Lindblad of Infoseek. |
| |
| - Added operator.__not__ and operator.not_. |
| |
| - In the thread module, when a thread exits due to an unhandled |
| exception, don't store the exception information in sys.last_*; it |
| prevents proper calling of destructors of local variables. |
| |
| - Fixed a number of small bugs in the cPickle module. |
| |
| - Changed find() and rfind() in the strop module so that |
| find("x","",2) returns -1, matching the implementation in string.py. |
| |
| - In the time module, be more careful with the result of ctime(), and |
| test for HAVE_MKTIME before usinmg mktime(). |
| |
| - Doc strings contributed by Mitch Chapman to the termios, pwd, gdbm |
| modules. |
| |
| - Added the LOG_SYSLOG constant to the syslog module, if defined. |
| |
| Standard library modules |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| - All standard library modules have been converted to an indentation |
| style using either only tabs or only spaces -- never a mixture -- if |
| they weren't already consistent according to tabnanny. This means |
| that the new -t option (see above) won't complain about standard |
| library modules. |
| |
| - New standard library modules: |
| |
| threading -- GvR and the thread-sig |
| Java style thread objects -- USE THIS!!! |
| |
| getpass -- Piers Lauder |
| simple utilities to prompt for a password and to |
| retrieve the current username |
| |
| imaplib -- Piers Lauder |
| interface for the IMAP4 protocol |
| |
| poplib -- David Ascher, Piers Lauder |
| interface for the POP3 protocol |
| |
| smtplib -- Dragon De Monsyne |
| interface for the SMTP protocol |
| |
| - Some obsolete modules moved to a separate directory (Lib/lib-old) |
| which is *not* in the default module search path: |
| |
| Para |
| addpack |
| codehack |
| fmt |
| lockfile |
| newdir |
| ni |
| rand |
| tb |
| |
| - New version of the PCRE code (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions -- |
| the re module and the supporting pcre extension) by Andrew Kuchling. |
| Incompatible new feature in re.sub(): the handling of escapes in the |
| replacement string has changed. |
| |
| - Interface change in the copy module: a __deepcopy__ method is now |
| called with the memo dictionary as an argument. |
| |
| - Feature change in the tokenize module: differentiate between NEWLINE |
| token (an official newline) and NL token (a newline that the grammar |
| ignores). |
| |
| - Several bugfixes to the urllib module. It is now truly thread-safe, |
| and several bugs and a portability problem have been fixed. New |
| features, all due to Sjoerd Mullender: When creating a temporary file, |
| it gives it an appropriate suffix. Support the "data:" URL scheme. |
| The open() method uses the tempcache. |
| |
| - New version of the xmllib module (this time with a test suite!) by |
| Sjoerd Mullender. |
| |
| - Added debugging code to the telnetlib module, to be able to trace |
| the actual traffic. |
| |
| - In the rfc822 module, added support for deleting a header (still no |
| support for adding headers, though). Also fixed a bug where an |
| illegal address would cause a crash in getrouteaddr(), fixed a |
| sign reversal in mktime_tz(), and use the local timezone by default |
| (the latter two due to Bill van Melle). |
| |
| - The normpath() function in the dospath and ntpath modules no longer |
| does case normalization -- for that, use the separate function |
| normcase() (which always existed); normcase() has been sped up and |
| fixed (it was the cause of a crash in Mark Hammond's installer in |
| certain locales). |
| |
| - New command supported by the ftplib module: rmd(); also fixed some |
| minor bugs. |
| |
| - The profile module now uses a different timer function by default -- |
| time.clock() is generally better than os.times(). This makes it work |
| better on Windows NT, too. |
| |
| - The tempfile module now recovers when os.getcwd() raises an |
| exception. |
| |
| - Fixed some bugs in the random module; gauss() was subtly wrong, and |
| vonmisesvariate() should return a full circle. Courtesy Mike Miller, |
| Lambert Meertens (gauss()), and Magnus Kessler (vonmisesvariate()). |
| |
| - Better default seed in the whrandom module, courtesy Andrew Kuchling. |
| |
| - Fix slow close() in shelve module. |
| |
| - The Unix mailbox class in the mailbox module is now more robust when |
| a line begins with the string "From " but is definitely not the start |
| of a new message. The pattern used can be changed by overriding a |
| method or class variable. |
| |
| - Added a rmtree() function to the copy module. |
| |
| - Fixed several typos in the pickle module. Also fixed problems when |
| unpickling in restricted execution environments. |
| |
| - Added docstrings and fixed a typo in the py_compile and compileall |
| modules. At Mark Hammond's repeated request, py_compile now append a |
| newline to the source if it needs one. Both modules support an extra |
| parameter to specify the purported source filename (to be used in |
| error messages). |
| |
| - Some performance tweaks by Jeremy Hylton to the gzip module. |
| |
| - Fixed a bug in the merge order of dictionaries in the ConfigParser |
| module. Courtesy Barry Warsaw. |
| |
| - In the multifile module, support the optional second parameter to |
| seek() when possible. |
| |
| - Several fixes to the gopherlib module by Lars Marius Garshol. Also, |
| urlparse now correctly handles Gopher URLs with query strings. |
| |
| - Fixed a tiny bug in format_exception() in the traceback module. |
| Also rewrite tb_lineno() to be compatible with JPython (and not |
| disturb the current exception!); by Jim Hugunin. |
| |
| - The httplib module is more robust when servers send a short response |
| -- courtesy Tim O'Malley. |
| |
| Tkinter and friends |
| ------------------- |
| |
| - Various typos and bugs fixed. |
| |
| - New module Tkdnd implements a drag-and-drop protocol (within one |
| application only). |
| |
| - The event_*() widget methods have been restructured slightly -- they |
| no longer use the default root. |
| |
| - The interfaces for the bind*() and unbind() widget methods have been |
| redesigned; the bind*() methods now return the name of the Tcl command |
| created for the callback, and this can be passed as a optional |
| argument to unbind() in order to delete the command (normally, such |
| commands are automatically unbound when the widget is destroyed, but |
| for some applications this isn't enough). |
| |
| - Variable objects now have trace methods to interface to Tcl's |
| variable tracing facilities. |
| |
| - Image objects now have an optional keyword argument, 'master', to |
| specify a widget (tree) to which they belong. The image_names() and |
| image_types() calls are now also widget methods. |
| |
| - There's a new global call, Tkinter.NoDefaultRoot(), which disables |
| all use of the default root by the Tkinter library. This is useful to |
| debug applications that are in the process of being converted from |
| relying on the default root to explicit specification of the root |
| widget. |
| |
| - The 'exit' command is deleted from the Tcl interpreter, since it |
| provided a loophole by which one could (accidentally) exit the Python |
| interpreter without invoking any cleanup code. |
| |
| - Tcl_Finalize() is now registered as a Python low-level exit handle, |
| so Tcl will be finalized when Python exits. |
| |
| The Python/C API |
| ---------------- |
| |
| - New function PyThreadState_GetDict() returns a per-thread dictionary |
| intended for storing thread-local global variables. |
| |
| - New functions Py_ReprEnter() and Py_ReprLeave() use the per-thread |
| dictionary to allow recursive container types to detect recursion in |
| their repr(), str() and print implementations. |
| |
| - New function PyObject_Not(x) calculates (not x) according to Python's |
| standard rules (basically, it negates the outcome PyObject_IsTrue(x). |
| |
| - New function _PyModule_Clear(), which clears a module's dictionary |
| carefully without removing the __builtins__ entry. This is implied |
| when a module object is deallocated (this used to clear the dictionary |
| completely). |
| |
| - New function PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(), which extends |
| PyImport_ExecCodeModule() by adding an extra parameter to pass it the |
| true file. |
| |
| - New functions Py_GetPythonHome() and Py_SetPythonHome(), intended to |
| allow embedded applications to force a different value for PYTHONHOME. |
| |
| - New global flag Py_FrozenFlag is set when this is a "frozen" Python |
| binary; it suppresses warnings about not being able to find the |
| standard library directories. |
| |
| - New global flag Py_TabcheckFlag is incremented by the -t option and |
| causes the tokenizer to issue warnings or errors about inconsistent |
| mixing of tabs and spaces for indentation. |
| |
| Miscellaneous minor changes and bug fixes |
| ----------------------------------------- |
| |
| - Improved the error message when an attribute of an attribute-less |
| object is requested -- include the name of the attribute and the type |
| of the object in the message. |
| |
| - Sped up int(), long(), float() a bit. |
| |
| - Fixed a bug in list.sort() that would occasionally dump core. |
| |
| - Fixed a bug in PyNumber_Power() that caused numeric arrays to fail |
| when taken tothe real power. |
| |
| - Fixed a number of bugs in the file reading code, at least one of |
| which could cause a core dump on NT, and one of which would |
| occasionally cause file.read() to return less than the full contents |
| of the file. |
| |
| - Performance hack by Vladimir Marangozov for stack frame creation. |
| |
| - Make sure setvbuf() isn't used unless HAVE_SETVBUF is defined. |
| |
| Windows 95/NT |
| ------------- |
| |
| - The .lib files are now part of the distribution; they are collected |
| in the subdirectory "libs" of the installation directory. |
| |
| - The extension modules (.pyd files) are now collected in a separate |
| subdirectory of the installation directory named "DLLs". |
| |
| - The case of a module's filename must now match the case of the |
| module name as specified in the import statement. This is an |
| experimental feature -- if it turns out to break in too many |
| situations, it will be removed (or disabled by default) in the future. |
| It can be disabled on a per-case basis by setting the environment |
| variable PYTHONCASEOK (to any value). |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.5b2 to 1.5 |
| ================= |
| |
| - Newly documentated module: BaseHTTPServer.py, thanks to Greg Stein. |
| |
| - Added doc strings to string.py, stropmodule.c, structmodule.c, |
| thanks to Charles Waldman. |
| |
| - Many nits fixed in the manuals, thanks to Fred Drake and many others |
| (especially Rob Hooft and Andrew Kuchling). The HTML version now uses |
| HTML markup instead of inline GIF images for tables; only two images |
| are left (for obsure bits of math). The index of the HTML version has |
| also been much improved. Finally, it is once again possible to |
| generate an Emacs info file from the library manual (but I don't |
| commit to supporting this in future versions). |
| |
| - New module: telnetlib.py (a simple telnet client library). |
| |
| - New tool: Tools/versioncheck/, by Jack Jansen. |
| |
| - Ported zlibmodule.c and bsddbmodule.c to NT; The project file for MS |
| DevStudio 5.0 now includes new subprojects to build the zlib and bsddb |
| extension modules. |
| |
| - Many small changes again to Tkinter.py -- mostly bugfixes and adding |
| missing routines. Thanks to Greg McFarlane for reporting a bunch of |
| problems and proofreading my fixes. |
| |
| - The re module and its documentation are up to date with the latest |
| version released to the string-sig (Dec. 22). |
| |
| - Stop test_grp.py from failing when the /etc/group file is empty |
| (yes, this happens!). |
| |
| - Fix bug in integer conversion (mystrtoul.c) that caused |
| 4294967296==0 to be true! |
| |
| - The VC++ 4.2 project file should be complete again. |
| |
| - In tempfile.py, use a better template on NT, and add a new optional |
| argument "suffix" with default "" to specify a specific extension for |
| the temporary filename (needed sometimes on NT but perhaps also handy |
| elsewhere). |
| |
| - Fixed some bugs in the FAQ wizard, and converted it to use re |
| instead of regex. |
| |
| - Fixed a mysteriously undetected error in dlmodule.c (it was using a |
| totally bogus routine name to raise an exception). |
| |
| - Fixed bug in import.c which wasn't using the new "dos-8x3" name yet. |
| |
| - Hopefully harmless changes to the build process to support shared |
| libraries on DG/UX. This adds a target to create |
| libpython$(VERSION).so; however this target is *only* for DG/UX. |
| |
| - Fixed a bug in the new format string error checking in getargs.c. |
| |
| - A simple fix for infinite recursion when printing __builtins__: |
| reset '_' to None before printing and set it to the printed variable |
| *after* printing (and only when printing is successful). |
| |
| - Fixed lib-tk/SimpleDialog.py to keep the dialog visible even if the |
| parent window is not (Skip Montanaro). |
| |
| - Fixed the two most annoying problems with ftp URLs in |
| urllib.urlopen(); an empty file now correctly raises an error, and it |
| is no longer required to explicitly close the returned "file" object |
| before opening another ftp URL to the same host and directory. |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.5b1 to 1.5b2 |
| =================== |
| |
| - Fixed a bug in cPickle.c that caused it to crash right away because |
| the version string had a different format. |
| |
| - Changes in pickle.py and cPickle.c: when unpickling an instance of a |
| class that doesn't define the __getinitargs__() method, the __init__() |
| constructor is no longer called. This makes a much larger group of |
| classes picklable by default, but may occasionally change semantics. |
| To force calling __init__() on unpickling, define a __getinitargs__() |
| method. Other changes too, in particular cPickle now handles classes |
| defined in packages correctly. The same change applies to copying |
| instances with copy.py. The cPickle.c changes and some pickle.py |
| changes are courtesy Jim Fulton. |
| |
| - Locale support in he "re" (Perl regular expressions) module. Use |
| the flag re.L (or re.LOCALE) to enable locale-specific matching |
| rules for \w and \b. The in-line syntax for this flag is (?L). |
| |
| - The built-in function isinstance(x, y) now also succeeds when y is |
| a type object and type(x) is y. |
| |
| - repr() and str() of class and instance objects now reflect the |
| package/module in which the class is defined. |
| |
| - Module "ni" has been removed. (If you really need it, it's been |
| renamed to "ni1". Let me know if this causes any problems for you. |
| Package authors are encouraged to write __init__.py files that |
| support both ni and 1.5 package support, so the same version can be |
| used with Python 1.4 as well as 1.5.) |
| |
| - The thread module is now automatically included when threads are |
| configured. (You must remove it from your existing Setup file, |
| since it is now in its own Setup.thread file.) |
| |
| - New command line option "-x" to skip the first line of the script; |
| handy to make executable scripts on non-Unix platforms. |
| |
| - In importdl.c, add the RTLD_GLOBAL to the dlopen() flags. I |
| haven't checked how this affects things, but it should make symbols |
| in one shared library available to the next one. |
| |
| - The Windows installer now installs in the "Program Files" folder on |
| the proper volume by default. |
| |
| - The Windows configuration adds a new main program, "pythonw", and |
| registers a new extension, ".pyw" that invokes this. This is a |
| pstandard Python interpreter that does not pop up a console window; |
| handy for pure Tkinter applications. All output to the original |
| stdout and stderr is lost; reading from the original stdin yields |
| EOF. Also, both python.exe and pythonw.exe now have a pretty icon |
| (a green snake in a box, courtesy Mark Hammond). |
| |
| - Lots of improvements to emacs-mode.el again. See Barry's web page: |
| http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html. |
| |
| - Lots of improvements and additions to the library reference manual; |
| many by Fred Drake. |
| |
| - Doc strings for the following modules: rfc822.py, posixpath.py, |
| ntpath.py, httplib.py. Thanks to Mitch Chapman and Charles Waldman. |
| |
| - Some more regression testing. |
| |
| - An optional 4th (maxsplit) argument to strop.replace(). |
| |
| - Fixed handling of maxsplit in string.splitfields(). |
| |
| - Tweaked os.environ so it can be pickled and copied. |
| |
| - The portability problems caused by indented preprocessor commands |
| and C++ style comments should be gone now. |
| |
| - In random.py, added Pareto and Weibull distributions. |
| |
| - The crypt module is now disabled in Modules/Setup.in by default; it |
| is rarely needed and causes errors on some systems where users often |
| don't know how to deal with those. |
| |
| - Some improvements to the _tkinter build line suggested by Case Roole. |
| |
| - A full suite of platform specific files for NetBSD 1.x, submitted by |
| Anders Andersen. |
| |
| - New Solaris specific header STROPTS.py. |
| |
| - Moved a confusing occurrence of *shared* from the comments in |
| Modules/Setup.in (people would enable this one instead of the real |
| one, and get disappointing results). |
| |
| - Changed the default mode for directories to be group-writable when |
| the installation process creates them. |
| |
| - Check for pthread support in "-l_r" for FreeBSD/NetBSD, and support |
| shared libraries for both. |
| |
| - Support FreeBSD and NetBSD in posixfile.py. |
| |
| - Support for the "event" command, new in Tk 4.2. By Case Roole. |
| |
| - Add Tix_SafeInit() support to tkappinit.c. |
| |
| - Various bugs fixed in "re.py" and "pcre.c". |
| |
| - Fixed a bug (broken use of the syntax table) in the old "regexpr.c". |
| |
| - In frozenmain.c, stdin is made unbuffered too when PYTHONUNBUFFERED |
| is set. |
| |
| - Provide default blocksize for retrbinary in ftplib.py (Skip |
| Montanaro). |
| |
| - In NT, pick the username up from different places in user.py (Jeff |
| Bauer). |
| |
| - Patch to urlparse.urljoin() for ".." and "..#1", Marc Lemburg. |
| |
| - Many small improvements to Jeff Rush' OS/2 support. |
| |
| - ospath.py is gone; it's been obsolete for so many years now... |
| |
| - The reference manual is now set up to prepare better HTML (still |
| using webmaker, alas). |
| |
| - Add special handling to /Tools/freeze for Python modules that are |
| imported implicitly by the Python runtime: 'site' and 'exceptions'. |
| |
| - Tools/faqwiz 0.8.3 -- add an option to suppress URL processing |
| inside <PRE>, by "Scott". |
| |
| - Added ConfigParser.py, a generic parser for sectioned configuration |
| files. |
| |
| - In _localemodule.c, LC_MESSAGES is not always defined; put it |
| between #ifdefs. |
| |
| - Typo in resource.c: RUSAGE_CHILDERN -> RUSAGE_CHILDREN. |
| |
| - Demo/scripts/newslist.py: Fix the way the version number is gotten |
| out of the RCS revision. |
| |
| - PyArg_Parse[Tuple] now explicitly check for bad characters at the |
| end of the format string. |
| |
| - Revamped PC/example_nt to support VC++ 5.x. |
| |
| - <listobject>.sort() now uses a modified quicksort by Raymund Galvin, |
| after studying the GNU libg++ quicksort. This should be much faster |
| if there are lots of duplicates, and otherwise at least as good. |
| |
| - Added "uue" as an alias for "uuencode" to mimetools.py. (Hm, the |
| uudecode bug where it complaints about trailing garbage is still there |
| :-( ). |
| |
| - pickle.py requires integers in text mode to be in decimal notation |
| (it used to accept octal and hex, even though it would only generate |
| decimal numbers). |
| |
| - In string.atof(), don't fail when the "re" module is unavailable. |
| Plug the ensueing security leak by supplying an empty __builtins__ |
| directory to eval(). |
| |
| - A bunch of small fixes and improvements to Tkinter.py. |
| |
| - Fixed a buffer overrun in PC/getpathp.c. |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.5a4 to 1.5b1 |
| =================== |
| |
| - The Windows NT/95 installer now includes full HTML of all manuals. |
| It also has a checkbox that lets you decide whether to install the |
| interpreter and library. The WISE installer script for the installer |
| is included in the source tree as PC/python15.wse, and so are the |
| icons used for Python files. The config.c file for the Windows build |
| is now complete with the pcre module. |
| |
| - sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 can now arbitrary objects; their str() is |
| evaluated for the prompt. |
| |
| - The reference manual is brought up to date (more or less -- it still |
| needs work, e.g. in the area of package import). |
| |
| - The icons used by latex2html are now included in the Doc |
| subdirectory (mostly so that tarring up the HTML files can be fully |
| automated). A simple index.html is also added to Doc (it only works |
| after you have successfully run latex2html). |
| |
| - For all you would-be proselytizers out there: a new version of |
| Misc/BLURB describes Python more concisely, and Misc/comparisons |
| compares Python to several other languages. Misc/BLURB.WINDOWS |
| contains a blurb specifically aimed at Windows programmers (by Mark |
| Hammond). |
| |
| - A new version of the Python mode for Emacs is included as |
| Misc/python-mode.el. There are too many new features to list here. |
| See http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for more info. |
| |
| - New module fileinput makes iterating over the lines of a list of |
| files easier. (This still needs some more thinking to make it more |
| extensible.) |
| |
| - There's full OS/2 support, courtesy Jeff Rush. To build the OS/2 |
| version, see PC/readme.txt and PC/os2vacpp. This is for IBM's Visual |
| Age C++ compiler. I expect that Jeff will also provide a binary |
| release for this platform. |
| |
| - On Linux, the configure script now uses '-Xlinker -export-dynamic' |
| instead of '-rdynamic' to link the main program so that it exports its |
| symbols to shared libraries it loads dynamically. I hope this doesn't |
| break on older Linux versions; it is needed for mklinux and appears to |
| work on Linux 2.0.30. |
| |
| - Some Tkinter resstructuring: the geometry methods that apply to a |
| master are now properly usable on toplevel master widgets. There's a |
| new (internal) widget class, BaseWidget. New, longer "official" names |
| for the geometry manager methods have been added, |
| e.g. "grid_columnconfigure()" instead of "columnconfigure()". The old |
| shorter names still work, and where there's ambiguity, pack wins over |
| place wins over grid. Also, the bind_class method now returns its |
| value. |
| |
| - New, RFC-822 conformant parsing of email addresses and address lists |
| in the rfc822 module, courtesy Ben Escoto. |
| |
| - New, revamped tkappinit.c with support for popular packages (PIL, |
| TIX, BLT, TOGL). For the last three, you need to execute the Tcl |
| command "load {} Tix" (or Blt, or Togl) to gain access to them. |
| The Modules/Setup line for the _tkinter module has been rewritten |
| using the cool line-breaking feature of most Bourne shells. |
| |
| - New socket method connect_ex() returns the error code from connect() |
| instead of raising an exception on errors; this makes the logic |
| required for asynchronous connects simpler and more efficient. |
| |
| - New "locale" module with (still experimental) interface to the |
| standard C library locale interface, courtesy Martin von Loewis. This |
| does not repeat my mistake in 1.5a4 of always calling |
| setlocale(LC_ALL, ""). In fact, we've pretty much decided that |
| Python's standard numerical formatting operations should always use |
| the conventions for the C locale; the locale module contains utility |
| functions to format numbers according to the user specified locale. |
| (All this is accomplished by an explicit call to setlocale(LC_NUMERIC, |
| "C") after locale-changing calls.) See the library manual. (Alas, the |
| promised changes to the "re" module for locale support have not been |
| materialized yet. If you care, volunteer!) |
| |
| - Memory leak plugged in Py_BuildValue when building a dictionary. |
| |
| - Shared modules can now live inside packages (hierarchical module |
| namespaces). No changes to the shared module itself are needed. |
| |
| - Improved policy for __builtins__: this is a module in __main__ and a |
| dictionary everywhere else. |
| |
| - Python no longer catches SIGHUP and SIGTERM by default. This was |
| impossible to get right in the light of thread contexts. If you want |
| your program to clean up when a signal happens, use the signal module |
| to set up your own signal handler. |
| |
| - New Python/C API PyNumber_CoerceEx() does not return an exception |
| when no coercion is possible. This is used to fix a problem where |
| comparing incompatible numbers for equality would raise an exception |
| rather than return false as in Python 1.4 -- it once again will return |
| false. |
| |
| - The errno module is changed again -- the table of error messages |
| (errorstr) is removed. Instead, you can use os.strerror(). This |
| removes redundance and a potential locale dependency. |
| |
| - New module xmllib, to parse XML files. By Sjoerd Mullender. |
| |
| - New C API PyOS_AfterFork() is called after fork() in posixmodule.c. |
| It resets the signal module's notion of what the current process ID |
| and thread are, so that signal handlers will work after (and across) |
| calls to os.fork(). |
| |
| - Fixed most occurrences of fatal errors due to missing thread state. |
| |
| - For vgrind (a flexible source pretty printer) fans, there's a simple |
| Python definition in Misc/vgrindefs, courtesy Neale Pickett. |
| |
| - Fixed memory leak in exec statement. |
| |
| - The test.pystone module has a new function, pystones(loops=LOOPS), |
| which returns a (benchtime, stones) tuple. The main() function now |
| calls this and prints the report. |
| |
| - Package directories now *require* the presence of an __init__.py (or |
| __init__.pyc) file before they are considered as packages. This is |
| done to prevent accidental subdirectories with common names from |
| overriding modules with the same name. |
| |
| - Fixed some strange exceptions in __del__ methods in library modules |
| (e.g. urllib). This happens because the builtin names are already |
| deleted by the time __del__ is called. The solution (a hack, but it |
| works) is to set some instance variables to 0 instead of None. |
| |
| - The table of built-in module initializers is replaced by a pointer |
| variable. This makes it possible to switch to a different table at |
| run time, e.g. when a collection of modules is loaded from a shared |
| library. (No example code of how to do this is given, but it is |
| possible.) The table is still there of course, its name prefixed with |
| an underscore and used to initialize the pointer. |
| |
| - The warning about a thread still having a frame now only happens in |
| verbose mode. |
| |
| - Change the signal finialization so that it also resets the signal |
| handlers. After this has been called, our signal handlers are no |
| longer active! |
| |
| - New version of tokenize.py (by Ka-Ping Yee) recognizes raw string |
| literals. There's now also a test fort this module. |
| |
| - The copy module now also uses __dict__.update(state) instead of |
| going through individual attribute assignments, for class instances |
| without a __setstate__ method. |
| |
| - New module reconvert translates old-style (regex module) regular |
| expressions to new-style (re module, Perl-style) regular expressions. |
| |
| - Most modules that used to use the regex module now use the re |
| module. The grep module has a new pgrep() function which uses |
| Perl-style regular expressions. |
| |
| - The (very old, backwards compatibility) regexp.py module has been |
| deleted. |
| |
| - Restricted execution (rexec): added the pcre module (support for the |
| re module) to the list of trusted extension modules. |
| |
| - New version of Jim Fulton's CObject object type, adds |
| PyCObject_FromVoidPtrAndDesc() and PyCObject_GetDesc() APIs. |
| |
| - Some patches to Lee Busby's fpectl mods that accidentally didn't |
| make it into 1.5a4. |
| |
| - In the string module, add an optional 4th argument to count(), |
| matching find() etc. |
| |
| - Patch for the nntplib module by Charles Waldman to add optional user |
| and password arguments to NNTP.__init__(), for nntp servers that need |
| them. |
| |
| - The str() function for class objects now returns |
| "modulename.classname" instead of returning the same as repr(). |
| |
| - The parsing of \xXX escapes no longer relies on sscanf(). |
| |
| - The "sharedmodules" subdirectory of the installation is renamed to |
| "lib-dynload". (You may have to edit your Modules/Setup file to fix |
| this in an existing installation!) |
| |
| - Fixed Don Beaudry's mess-up with the OPT test in the configure |
| script. Certain SGI platforms will still issue a warning for each |
| compile; there's not much I can do about this since the compiler's |
| exit status doesn't indicate that I was using an obsolete option. |
| |
| - Fixed Barry's mess-up with {}.get(), and added test cases for it. |
| |
| - Shared libraries didn't quite work under AIX because of the change |
| in status of the GNU readline interface. Fix due to by Vladimir |
| Marangozov. |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.5a3 to 1.5a4 |
| =================== |
| |
| - faqwiz.py: version 0.8; Recognize https:// as URL; <html>...</html> |
| feature; better install instructions; removed faqmain.py (which was an |
| older version). |
| |
| - nntplib.py: Fixed some bugs reported by Lars Wirzenius (to Debian) |
| about the treatment of lines starting with '.'. Added a minimal test |
| function. |
| |
| - struct module: ignore most whitespace in format strings. |
| |
| - urllib.py: close the socket and temp file in URLopener.retrieve() so |
| that multiple retrievals using the same connection work. |
| |
| - All standard exceptions are now classes by default; use -X to make |
| them strings (for backward compatibility only). |
| |
| - There's a new standard exception hierarchy, defined in the standard |
| library module exceptions.py (which you never need to import |
| explicitly). See |
| http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/stdexceptions.html for |
| more info. |
| |
| - Three new C API functions: |
| |
| - int PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches(obj1, obj2) |
| |
| Returns 1 if obj1 and obj2 are the same object, or if obj1 is an |
| instance of type obj2, or of a class derived from obj2 |
| |
| - int PyErr_ExceptionMatches(obj) |
| |
| Higher level wrapper around PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches() which uses |
| PyErr_Occurred() as obj1. This will be the more commonly called |
| function. |
| |
| - void PyErr_NormalizeException(typeptr, valptr, tbptr) |
| |
| Normalizes exceptions, and places the normalized values in the |
| arguments. If type is not a class, this does nothing. If type is a |
| class, then it makes sure that value is an instance of the class by: |
| |
| 1. if instance is of the type, or a class derived from type, it does |
| nothing. |
| |
| 2. otherwise it instantiates the class, using the value as an |
| argument. If value is None, it uses an empty arg tuple, and if |
| the value is a tuple, it uses just that. |
| |
| - Another new C API function: PyErr_NewException() creates a new |
| exception class derived from Exception; when -X is given, it creates a |
| new string exception. |
| |
| - core interpreter: remove the distinction between tuple and list |
| unpacking; allow an arbitrary sequence on the right hand side of any |
| unpack instruction. (UNPACK_LIST and UNPACK_TUPLE now do the same |
| thing, which should really be called UNPACK_SEQUENCE.) |
| |
| - classes: Allow assignments to an instance's __dict__ or __class__, |
| so you can change ivars (including shared ivars -- shock horror) and |
| change classes dynamically. Also make the check on read-only |
| attributes of classes less draconic -- only the specials names |
| __dict__, __bases__, __name__ and __{get,set,del}attr__ can't be |
| assigned. |
| |
| - Two new built-in functions: issubclass() and isinstance(). Both |
| take classes as their second arguments. The former takes a class as |
| the first argument and returns true iff first is second, or is a |
| subclass of second. The latter takes any object as the first argument |
| and returns true iff first is an instance of the second, or any |
| subclass of second. |
| |
| - configure: Added configuration tests for presence of alarm(), |
| pause(), and getpwent(). |
| |
| - Doc/Makefile: changed latex2html targets. |
| |
| - classes: Reverse the search order for the Don Beaudry hook so that |
| the first class with an applicable hook wins. Makes more sense. |
| |
| - Changed the checks made in Py_Initialize() and Py_Finalize(). It is |
| now legal to call these more than once. The first call to |
| Py_Initialize() initializes, the first call to Py_Finalize() |
| finalizes. There's also a new API, Py_IsInitalized() which checks |
| whether we are already initialized (in case you want to leave things |
| as they were). |
| |
| - Completely disable the declarations for malloc(), realloc() and |
| free(). Any 90's C compiler has these in header files, and the tests |
| to decide whether to suppress the declarations kept failing on some |
| platforms. |
| |
| - *Before* (instead of after) signalmodule.o is added, remove both |
| intrcheck.o and sigcheck.o. This should get rid of warnings in ar or |
| ld on various systems. |
| |
| - Added reop to PC/config.c |
| |
| - configure: Decided to use -Aa -D_HPUX_SOURCE on HP-UX platforms. |
| Removed outdated HP-UX comments from README. Added Cray T3E comments. |
| |
| - Various renames of statically defined functions that had name |
| conflicts on some systems, e.g. strndup (GNU libc), join (Cray), |
| roundup (sys/types.h). |
| |
| - urllib.py: Interpret three slashes in file: URL as local file (for |
| Netscape on Windows/Mac). |
| |
| - copy.py: Make sure the objects returned by __getinitargs__() are |
| kept alive (in the memo) to avoid a certain kind of nasty crash. (Not |
| easily reproducable because it requires a later call to |
| __getinitargs__() to return a tuple that happens to be allocated at |
| the same address.) |
| |
| - Added definition of AR to toplevel Makefile. Renamed @buildno temp |
| file to buildno1. |
| |
| - Moved Include/assert.h to Parser/assert.h, which seems to be the |
| only place where it's needed. |
| |
| - Tweaked the dictionary lookup code again for some more speed |
| (Vladimir Marangozov). |
| |
| - NT build: Changed the way python15.lib is included in the other |
| projects. Per Mark Hammond's suggestion, add it to the extra libs in |
| Settings instead of to the project's source files. |
| |
| - regrtest.py: Change default verbosity so that there are only three |
| levels left: -q, default and -v. In default mode, the name of each |
| test is now printed. -v is the same as the old -vv. -q is more quiet |
| than the old default mode. |
| |
| - Removed the old FAQ from the distribution. You now have to get it |
| from the web! |
| |
| - Removed the PC/make_nt.in file from the distribution; it is no |
| longer needed. |
| |
| - Changed the build sequence so that shared modules are built last. |
| This fixes things for AIX and doesn't hurt elsewhere. |
| |
| - Improved test for GNU MP v1 in mpzmodule.c |
| |
| - fileobject.c: ftell() on Linux discards all buffered data; changed |
| read() code to use lseek() instead to get the same effect |
| |
| - configure.in, configure, importdl.c: NeXT sharedlib fixes |
| |
| - tupleobject.c: PyTuple_SetItem asserts refcnt==1 |
| |
| - resource.c: Different strategy regarding whether to declare |
| getrusage() and getpagesize() -- #ifdef doesn't work, Linux has |
| conflicting decls in its headers. Choice: only declare the return |
| type, not the argument prototype, and not on Linux. |
| |
| - importdl.c, configure*: set sharedlib extensions properly for NeXT |
| |
| - configure*, Makefile.in, Modules/Makefile.pre.in: AIX shared libraries |
| fixed; moved addition of PURIFY to LINKCC to configure |
| |
| - reopmodule.c, regexmodule.c, regexpr.c, zlibmodule.c: needed casts |
| added to shup up various compilers. |
| |
| - _tkinter.c: removed buggy mac #ifndef |
| |
| - Doc: various Mac documentation changes, added docs for 'ic' module |
| |
| - PC/make_nt.in: deleted |
| |
| - test_time.py, test_strftime.py: tweaks to catch %Z (which may return |
| "") |
| |
| - test_rotor.py: print b -> print `b` |
| |
| - Tkinter.py: (tagOrId) -> (tagOrId,) |
| |
| - Tkinter.py: the Tk class now also has a configure() method and |
| friends (they have been moved to the Misc class to accomplish this). |
| |
| - dict.get(key[, default]) returns dict[key] if it exists, or default |
| if it doesn't. The default defaults to None. This is quicker for |
| some applications than using either has_key() or try:...except |
| KeyError:.... |
| |
| - Tools/webchecker/: some small changes to webchecker.py; added |
| websucker.py (a simple web site mirroring script). |
| |
| - Dictionary objects now have a get() method (also in UserDict.py). |
| dict.get(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists and default |
| otherwise; default defaults to None. |
| |
| - Tools/scripts/logmerge.py: print the author, too. |
| |
| - Changes to import: support for "import a.b.c" is now built in. See |
| http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html |
| for more info. Most important deviations from "ni.py": __init__.py is |
| executed in the package's namespace instead of as a submodule; and |
| there's no support for "__" or "__domain__". Note that "ni.py" is not |
| changed to match this -- it is simply declared obsolete (while at the |
| same time, it is documented...:-( ). |
| Unfortunately, "ihooks.py" has not been upgraded (but see "knee.py" |
| for an example implementation of hierarchical module import written in |
| Python). |
| |
| - More changes to import: the site.py module is now imported by |
| default when Python is initialized; use -S to disable it. The site.py |
| module extends the path with several more directories: site-packages |
| inside the lib/python1.5/ directory, site-python in the lib/ |
| directory, and pathnames mentioned in *.pth files found in either of |
| those directories. See |
| http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html |
| for more info. |
| |
| - Changes to standard library subdirectory names: those subdirectories |
| that are not packages have been renamed with a hypen in their name, |
| e.g. lib-tk, lib-stdwin, plat-win, plat-linux2, plat-sunos5, dos-8x3. |
| The test suite is now a package -- to run a test, you must now use |
| "import test.test_foo". |
| |
| - A completely new re.py module is provided (thanks to Andrew |
| Kuchling, Tim Peters and Jeffrey Ollie) which uses Philip Hazel's |
| "pcre" re compiler and engine. For a while, the "old" re.py (which |
| was new in 1.5a3!) will be kept around as re1.py. The "old" regex |
| module and underlying parser and engine are still present -- while |
| regex is now officially obsolete, it will probably take several major |
| release cycles before it can be removed. |
| |
| - The posix module now has a strerror() function which translates an |
| error code to a string. |
| |
| - The emacs.py module (which was long obsolete) has been removed. |
| |
| - The universal makefile Misc/Makefile.pre.in now features an |
| "install" target. By default, installed shared libraries go into |
| $exec_prefix/lib/python$VERSION/site-packages/. |
| |
| - The install-sh script is installed with the other configuration |
| specific files (in the config/ subdirectory). |
| |
| - It turns out whatsound.py and sndhdr.py were identical modules. |
| Since there's also an imghdr.py file, I propose to make sndhdr.py the |
| official one. For compatibility, whatsound.py imports * from |
| sndhdr.py. |
| |
| - Class objects have a new attribute, __module__, giving the name of |
| the module in which they were declared. This is useful for pickle and |
| for printing the full name of a class exception. |
| |
| - Many extension modules no longer issue a fatal error when their |
| initialization fails; the importing code now checks whether an error |
| occurred during module initialization, and correctly propagates the |
| exception to the import statement. |
| |
| - Most extension modules now raise class-based exceptions (except when |
| -X is used). |
| |
| - Subtle changes to PyEval_{Save,Restore}Thread(): always swap the |
| thread state -- just don't manipulate the lock if it isn't there. |
| |
| - Fixed a bug in Python/getopt.c that made it do the wrong thing when |
| an option was a single '-'. Thanks to Andrew Kuchling. |
| |
| - New module mimetypes.py will guess a MIME type from a filename's |
| extension. |
| |
| - Windows: the DLL version is now settable via a resource rather than |
| being hardcoded. This can be used for "branding" a binary Python |
| distribution. |
| |
| - urllib.py is now threadsafe -- it now uses re instead of regex, and |
| sys.exc_info() instead of sys.exc_{type,value}. |
| |
| - Many other library modules that used to use |
| sys.exc_{type,value,traceback} are now more thread-safe by virtue of |
| using sys.exc_info(). |
| |
| - The functions in popen2 have an optional buffer size parameter. |
| Also, the command argument can now be either a string (passed to the |
| shell) or a list of arguments (passed directly to execv). |
| |
| - Alas, the thread support for _tkinter released with 1.5a3 didn't |
| work. It's been rewritten. The bad news is that it now requires a |
| modified version of a file in the standard Tcl distribution, which you |
| must compile with a -I option pointing to the standard Tcl source |
| tree. For this reason, the thread support is disabled by default. |
| |
| - The errno extension module adds two tables: errorcode maps errno |
| numbers to errno names (e.g. EINTR), and errorstr maps them to |
| message strings. (The latter is redundant because the new call |
| posix.strerror() now does the same, but alla...) (Marc-Andre Lemburg) |
| |
| - The readline extension module now provides some interfaces to |
| internal readline routines that make it possible to write a completer |
| in Python. An example completer, rlcompleter.py, is provided. |
| |
| When completing a simple identifier, it completes keywords, |
| built-ins and globals in __main__; when completing |
| NAME.NAME..., it evaluates (!) the expression up to the last |
| dot and completes its attributes. |
| |
| It's very cool to do "import string" type "string.", hit the |
| completion key (twice), and see the list of names defined by |
| the string module! |
| |
| Tip: to use the tab key as the completion key, call |
| |
| readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete") |
| |
| - The traceback.py module has a new function tb_lineno() by Marc-Andre |
| Lemburg which extracts the line number from the linenumber table in |
| the code object. Apparently the traceback object doesn't contains the |
| right linenumber when -O is used. Rather than guessing whether -O is |
| on or off, the module itself uses tb_lineno() unconditionally. |
| |
| - Fixed Demo/tkinter/matt/canvas-moving-or-creating.py: change bind() |
| to tag_bind() so it works again. |
| |
| - The pystone script is now a standard library module. Example use: |
| "import test.pystone; test.pystone.main()". |
| |
| - The import of the readline module in interactive mode is now also |
| attempted when -i is specified. (Yes, I know, giving in to Marc-Andre |
| Lemburg, who asked for this. :-) |
| |
| - rfc822.py: Entirely rewritten parseaddr() function by Sjoerd |
| Mullender, to be closer to the standard. This fixes the getaddr() |
| method. Unfortunately, getaddrlist() is as broken as ever, since it |
| splits on commas without regard for RFC 822 quoting conventions. |
| |
| - pprint.py: correctly emit trailing "," in singleton tuples. |
| |
| - _tkinter.c: export names for its type objects, TkappType and |
| TkttType. |
| |
| - pickle.py: use __module__ when defined; fix a particularly hard to |
| reproduce bug that confuses the memo when temporary objects are |
| returned by custom pickling interfaces; and a semantic change: when |
| unpickling the instance variables of an instance, use |
| inst.__dict__.update(value) instead of a for loop with setattr() over |
| the value.keys(). This is more consistent (the pickling doesn't use |
| getattr() either but pickles inst.__dict__) and avoids problems with |
| instances that have a __setattr__ hook. But it *is* a semantic change |
| (because the setattr hook is no longer used). So beware! |
| |
| - config.h is now installed (at last) in |
| $exec_prefix/include/python1.5/. For most sites, this means that it |
| is actually in $prefix/include/python1.5/, with all the other Python |
| include files, since $prefix and $exec_prefix are the same by |
| default. |
| |
| - The imp module now supports parts of the functionality to implement |
| import of hierarchical module names. It now supports find_module() |
| and load_module() for all types of modules. Docstrings have been |
| added for those functions in the built-in imp module that are still |
| relevant (some old interfaces are obsolete). For a sample |
| implementation of hierarchical module import in Python, see the new |
| library module knee.py. |
| |
| - The % operator on string objects now allows arbitrary nested parens |
| in a %(...)X style format. (Brad Howes) |
| |
| - Reverse the order in which Setup and Setup.local are passed to the |
| makesetup script. This allows variable definitions in Setup.local to |
| override definitions in Setup. (But you'll still have to edit Setup |
| if you want to disable modules that are enabled by default, or if such |
| modules need non-standard options.) |
| |
| - Added PyImport_ImportModuleEx(name, globals, locals, fromlist); this |
| is like PyImport_ImporModule(name) but receives the globals and locals |
| dict and the fromlist arguments as well. (The name is a char*; the |
| others are PyObject*s). |
| |
| - The 'p' format in the struct extension module alloded to above is |
| new in 1.5a4. |
| |
| - The types.py module now uses try-except in a few places to make it |
| more likely that it can be imported in restricted mode. Some type |
| names are undefined in that case, e.g. CodeType (inaccessible), |
| FileType (not always accessible), and TracebackType and FrameType |
| (inaccessible). |
| |
| - In urllib.py: added separate administration of temporary files |
| created y URLopener.retrieve() so cleanup() can properly remove them. |
| The old code removed everything in tempcache which was a bad idea if |
| the user had passed a non-temp file into it. Also, in basejoin(), |
| interpret relative paths starting in "../". This is necessary if the |
| server uses symbolic links. |
| |
| - The Windows build procedure and project files are now based on |
| Microsoft Visual C++ 5.x. The build now takes place in the PCbuild |
| directory. It is much more robust, and properly builds separate Debug |
| and Release versions. (The installer will be added shortly.) |
| |
| - Added casts and changed some return types in regexpr.c to avoid |
| compiler warnings or errors on some platforms. |
| |
| - The AIX build tools for shared libraries now supports VPATH. (Donn |
| Cave) |
| |
| - By default, disable the "portable" multimedia modules audioop, |
| imageop, and rgbimg, since they don't work on 64-bit platforms. |
| |
| - Fixed a nasty bug in cStringIO.c when code was actually using the |
| close() method (the destructors would try to free certain fields a |
| second time). |
| |
| - For those who think they need it, there's a "user.py" module. This |
| is *not* imported by default, but can be imported to run user-specific |
| setup commands, ~/.pythonrc.py. |
| |
| - Various speedups suggested by Fredrik Lundh, Marc-Andre Lemburg, |
| Vladimir Marangozov, and others. |
| |
| - Added os.altsep; this is '/' on DOS/Windows, and None on systems |
| with a sane filename syntax. |
| |
| - os.py: Write out the dynamic OS choice, to avoid exec statements. |
| Adding support for a new OS is now a bit more work, but I bet that |
| 'dos' or 'nt' will cover most situations... |
| |
| - The obsolete exception AccessError is now really gone. |
| |
| - Tools/faqwiz/: New installation instructions show how to maintain |
| multiple FAQs. Removed bootstrap script from end of faqwiz.py module. |
| Added instructions to bootstrap script, too. Version bumped to 0.8.1. |
| Added <html>...</html> feature suggested by Skip Montanaro. Added |
| leading text for Roulette, default to 'Hit Reload ...'. Fix typo in |
| default SRCDIR. |
| |
| - Documentation for the relatively new modules "keyword" and "symbol" |
| has been added (to the end of the section on the parser extension |
| module). |
| |
| - In module bisect.py, but functions have two optional argument 'lo' |
| and 'hi' which allow you to specify a subsequence of the array to |
| operate on. |
| |
| - In ftplib.py, changed most methods to return their status (even when |
| it is always "200 OK") rather than swallowing it. |
| |
| - main() now calls setlocale(LC_ALL, ""), if setlocale() and |
| <locale.h> are defined. |
| |
| - Changes to configure.in, the configure script, and both |
| Makefile.pre.in files, to support SGI's SGI_ABI platform selection |
| environment variable. |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |
| |
| |
| From 1.4 to 1.5a3 |
| ================= |
| |
| Security |
| -------- |
| |
| - If you are using the setuid script C wrapper (Misc/setuid-prog.c), |
| please use the new version. The old version has a huge security leak. |
| |
| Miscellaneous |
| ------------- |
| |
| - Because of various (small) incompatible changes in the Python |
| bytecode interpreter, the magic number for .pyc files has changed |
| again. |
| |
| - The default module search path is now much saner. Both on Unix and |
| Windows, it is essentially derived from the path to the executable |
| (which can be overridden by setting the environment variable |
| $PYTHONHOME). The value of $PYTHONPATH on Windows is now inserted in |
| front of the default path, like in Unix (instead of overriding the |
| default path). On Windows, the directory containing the executable is |
| added to the end of the path. |
| |
| - A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs has been included. Also, |
| a new file ccpy-style.el has been added to configure Emacs cc-mode for |
| the preferred style in Python C sources. |
| |
| - On Unix, when using sys.argv[0] to insert the script directory in |
| front of sys.path, expand a symbolic link. You can now install a |
| program in a private directory and have a symbolic link to it in a |
| public bin directory, and it will put the private directory in the |
| module search path. Note that the symlink is expanded in sys.path[0] |
| but not in sys.argv[0], so you can still tell the name by which you |
| were invoked. |
| |
| - It is now recommended to use ``#!/usr/bin/env python'' instead of |
| ``#!/usr/local/bin/python'' at the start of executable scripts, except |
| for CGI scripts. It has been determined that the use of /usr/bin/env |
| is more portable than that of /usr/local/bin/python -- scripts almost |
| never have to be edited when the Python interpreter lives in a |
| non-standard place. Note that this doesn't work for CGI scripts since |
| the python executable often doesn't live in the HTTP server's default |
| search path. |
| |
| - The silly -s command line option and the corresponding |
| PYTHONSUPPRESS environment variable (and the Py_SuppressPrint global |
| flag in the Python/C API) are gone. |
| |
| - Most problems on 64-bit platforms should now be fixed. Andrew |
| Kuchling helped. Some uncommon extension modules are still not |
| clean (image and audio ops?). |
| |
| - Fixed a bug where multiple anonymous tuple arguments would be mixed up |
| when using the debugger or profiler (reported by Just van Rossum). |
| The simplest example is ``def f((a,b),(c,d)): print a,b,c,d''; this |
| would print the wrong value when run under the debugger or profiler. |
| |
| - The hacks that the dictionary implementation used to speed up |
| repeated lookups of the same C string were removed; these were a |
| source of subtle problems and don't seem to serve much of a purpose |
| any longer. |
| |
| - All traces of support for the long dead access statement have been |
| removed from the sources. |
| |
| - Plugged the two-byte memory leak in the tokenizer when reading an |
| interactive EOF. |
| |
| - There's a -O option to the interpreter that removes SET_LINENO |
| instructions and assert statements (see below); it uses and produces |
| .pyo files instead of .pyc files. The speedup is only a few percent |
| in most cases. The line numbers are still available in the .pyo file, |
| as a separate table (which is also available in .pyc files). However, |
| the removal of the SET_LINENO instructions means that the debugger |
| (pdb) can't set breakpoints on lines in -O mode. The traceback module |
| contains a function to extract a line number from the code object |
| referenced in a traceback object. In the future it should be possible |
| to write external bytecode optimizers that create better optimized |
| .pyo files, and there should be more control over optimization; |
| consider the -O option a "teaser". Without -O, the assert statement |
| actually generates code that first checks __debug__; if this variable |
| is false, the assertion is not checked. __debug__ is a built-in |
| variable whose value is initialized to track the -O flag (it's true |
| iff -O is not specified). With -O, no code is generated for assert |
| statements, nor for code of the form ``if __debug__: <something>''. |
| Sorry, no further constant folding happens. |
| |
| |
| Performance |
| ----------- |
| |
| - It's much faster (almost twice for pystone.py -- see |
| Tools/scripts). See the entry on string interning below. |
| |
| - Some speedup by using separate free lists for method objects (both |
| the C and the Python variety) and for floating point numbers. |
| |
| - Big speedup by allocating frame objects with a single malloc() call. |
| The Python/C API for frames is changed (you shouldn't be using this |
| anyway). |
| |
| - Significant speedup by inlining some common opcodes for common operand |
| types (e.g. i+i, i-i, and list[i]). Fredrik Lundh. |
| |
| - Small speedup by reordering the method tables of some common |
| objects (e.g. list.append is now first). |
| |
| - Big optimization to the read() method of file objects. A read() |
| without arguments now attempts to use fstat to allocate a buffer of |
| the right size; for pipes and sockets, it will fall back to doubling |
| the buffer size. While that the improvement is real on all systems, |
| it is most dramatic on Windows. |
| |
| |
| Documentation |
| ------------- |
| |
| - Many new pieces of library documentation were contributed, mostly by |
| Andrew Kuchling. Even cmath is now documented! There's also a |
| chapter of the library manual, "libundoc.tex", which provides a |
| listing of all undocumented modules, plus their status (e.g. internal, |
| obsolete, or in need of documentation). Also contributions by Sue |
| Williams, Skip Montanaro, and some module authors who succumbed to |
| pressure to document their own contributed modules :-). Note that |
| printing the documentation now kills fewer trees -- the margins have |
| been reduced. |
| |
| - I have started documenting the Python/C API. Unfortunately this project |
| hasn't been completed yet. It will be complete before the final release of |
| Python 1.5, though. At the moment, it's better to read the LaTeX source |
| than to attempt to run it through LaTeX and print the resulting dvi file. |
| |
| - The posix module (and hence os.py) now has doc strings! Thanks to Neil |
| Schemenauer. I received a few other contributions of doc strings. In most |
| other places, doc strings are still wishful thinking... |
| |
| |
| Language changes |
| ---------------- |
| |
| - Private variables with leading double underscore are now a permanent |
| feature of the language. (These were experimental in release 1.4. I have |
| favorable experience using them; I can't label them "experimental" |
| forever.) |
| |
| - There's new string literal syntax for "raw strings". Prefixing a string |
| literal with the letter r (or R) disables all escape processing in the |
| string; for example, r'\n' is a two-character string consisting of a |
| backslash followed by the letter n. This combines with all forms of string |
| quotes; it is actually useful for triple quoted doc strings which might |
| contain references to \n or \t. An embedded quote prefixed with a |
| backslash does not terminate the string, but the backslash is still |
| included in the string; for example, r'\'' is a two-character string |
| consisting of a backslash and a quote. (Raw strings are also |
| affectionately known as Robin strings, after their inventor, Robin |
| Friedrich.) |
| |
| - There's a simple assert statement, and a new exception |
| AssertionError. For example, ``assert foo > 0'' is equivalent to ``if |
| not foo > 0: raise AssertionError''. Sorry, the text of the asserted |
| condition is not available; it would be too complicated to generate |
| code for this (since the code is generated from a parse tree). |
| However, the text is displayed as part of the traceback! |
| |
| - The raise statement has a new feature: when using "raise SomeClass, |
| somevalue" where somevalue is not an instance of SomeClass, it |
| instantiates SomeClass(somevalue). In 1.5a4, if somevalue is an |
| instance of a *derived* class of SomeClass, the exception class raised |
| is set to somevalue.__class__, and SomeClass is ignored after that. |
| |
| - Duplicate keyword arguments are now detected at compile time; |
| f(a=1,a=2) is now a syntax error. |
| |
| |
| Changes to builtin features |
| --------------------------- |
| |
| - There's a new exception FloatingPointError (used only by Lee Busby's |
| patches to catch floating point exceptions, at the moment). |
| |
| - The obsolete exception ConflictError (presumably used by the long |
| obsolete access statement) has been deleted. |
| |
| - There's a new function sys.exc_info() which returns the tuple |
| (sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback) in a thread-safe way. |
| |
| - There's a new variable sys.executable, pointing to the executable file |
| for the Python interpreter. |
| |
| - The sort() methods for lists no longer uses the C library qsort(); I |
| wrote my own quicksort implementation, with lots of help (in the form |
| of a kind of competition) from Tim Peters. This solves a bug in |
| dictionary comparisons on some Solaris versions when Python is built |
| with threads, and makes sorting lists even faster. |
| |
| - The semantics of comparing two dictionaries have changed, to make |
| comparison of unequal dictionaries faster. A shorter dictionary is |
| always considered smaller than a larger dictionary. For dictionaries |
| of the same size, the smallest differing element determines the |
| outcome (which yields the same results as before in this case, without |
| explicit sorting). Thanks to Aaron Watters for suggesting something |
| like this. |
| |
| - The semantics of try-except have changed subtly so that calling a |
| function in an exception handler that itself raises and catches an |
| exception no longer overwrites the sys.exc_* variables. This also |
| alleviates the problem that objects referenced in a stack frame that |
| caught an exception are kept alive until another exception is caught |
| -- the sys.exc_* variables are restored to their previous value when |
| returning from a function that caught an exception. |
| |
| - There's a new "buffer" interface. Certain objects (e.g. strings and |
| arrays) now support the "buffer" protocol. Buffer objects are acceptable |
| whenever formerly a string was required for a write operation; mutable |
| buffer objects can be the target of a read operation using the call |
| f.readinto(buffer). A cool feature is that regular expression matching now |
| also work on array objects. Contribution by Jack Jansen. (Needs |
| documentation.) |
| |
| - String interning: dictionary lookups are faster when the lookup |
| string object is the same object as the key in the dictionary, not |
| just a string with the same value. This is done by having a pool of |
| "interned" strings. Most names generated by the interpreter are now |
| automatically interned, and there's a new built-in function intern(s) |
| that returns the interned version of a string. Interned strings are |
| not a different object type, and interning is totally optional, but by |
| interning most keys a speedup of about 15% was obtained for the |
| pystone benchmark. |
| |
| - Dictionary objects have several new methods; clear() and copy() have |
| the obvious semantics, while update(d) merges the contents of another |
| dictionary d into this one, overriding existing keys. The dictionary |
| implementation file is now called dictobject.c rather than the |
| confusing mappingobject.c. |
| |
| - The intrinsic function dir() is much smarter; it looks in __dict__, |
| __members__ and __methods__. |
| |
| - The intrinsic functions int(), long() and float() can now take a |
| string argument and then do the same thing as string.atoi(), |
| string.atol(), and string.atof(). No second 'base' argument is |
| allowed, and complex() does not take a string (nobody cared enough). |
| |
| - When a module is deleted, its globals are now deleted in two phases. |
| In the first phase, all variables whose name begins with exactly one |
| underscore are replaced by None; in the second phase, all variables |
| are deleted. This makes it possible to have global objects whose |
| destructors depend on other globals. The deletion order within each |
| phase is still random. |
| |
| - It is no longer an error for a function to be called without a |
| global variable __builtins__ -- an empty directory will be provided |
| by default. |
| |
| - Guido's corollary to the "Don Beaudry hook": it is now possible to |
| do metaprogramming by using an instance as a base class. Not for the |
| faint of heart; and undocumented as yet, but basically if a base class |
| is an instance, its class will be instantiated to create the new |
| class. Jim Fulton will love it -- it also works with instances of his |
| "extension classes", since it is triggered by the presence of a |
| __class__ attribute on the purported base class. See |
| Demo/metaclasses/index.html for an explanation and see that directory |
| for examples. |
| |
| - Another change is that the Don Beaudry hook is now invoked when |
| *any* base class is special. (Up to 1.5a3, the *last* special base |
| class is used; in 1.5a4, the more rational choice of the *first* |
| special base class is used.) |
| |
| - New optional parameter to the readlines() method of file objects. |
| This indicates the number of bytes to read (the actual number of bytes |
| read will be somewhat larger due to buffering reading until the end of |
| the line). Some optimizations have also been made to speed it up (but |
| not as much as read()). |
| |
| - Complex numbers no longer have the ".conj" pseudo attribute; use |
| z.conjugate() instead, or complex(z.real, -z.imag). Complex numbers |
| now *do* support the __members__ and __methods__ special attributes. |
| |
| - The complex() function now looks for a __complex__() method on class |
| instances before giving up. |
| |
| - Long integers now support arbitrary shift counts, so you can now |
| write 1L<<1000000, memory permitting. (Python 1.4 reports "outrageous |
| shift count for this.) |
| |
| - The hex() and oct() functions have been changed so that for regular |
| integers, they never emit a minus sign. For example, on a 32-bit |
| machine, oct(-1) now returns '037777777777' and hex(-1) returns |
| '0xffffffff'. While this may seem inconsistent, it is much more |
| useful. (For long integers, a minus sign is used as before, to fit |
| the result in memory :-) |
| |
| - The hash() function computes better hashes for several data types, |
| including strings, floating point numbers, and complex numbers. |
| |
| |
| New extension modules |
| --------------------- |
| |
| - New extension modules cStringIO.c and cPickle.c, written by Jim |
| Fulton and other folks at Digital Creations. These are much more |
| efficient than their Python counterparts StringIO.py and pickle.py, |
| but don't support subclassing. cPickle.c clocks up to 1000 times |
| faster than pickle.py; cStringIO.c's improvement is less dramatic but |
| still significant. |
| |
| - New extension module zlibmodule.c, interfacing to the free zlib |
| library (gzip compatible compression). There's also a module gzip.py |
| which provides a higher level interface. Written by Andrew Kuchling |
| and Jeremy Hylton. |
| |
| - New module readline; see the "miscellaneous" section above. |
| |
| - New Unix extension module resource.c, by Jeremy Hylton, provides |
| access to getrlimit(), getrusage(), setrusage(), getpagesize(), and |
| related symbolic constants. |
| |
| - New extension puremodule.c, by Barry Warsaw, which interfaces to the |
| Purify(TM) C API. See also the file Misc/PURIFY.README. It is also |
| possible to enable Purify by simply setting the PURIFY Makefile |
| variable in the Modules/Setup file. |
| |
| |
| Changes in extension modules |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| - The struct extension module has several new features to control byte |
| order and word size. It supports reading and writing IEEE floats even |
| on platforms where this is not the native format. It uses uppercase |
| format codes for unsigned integers of various sizes (always using |
| Python long ints for 'I' and 'L'), 's' with a size prefix for strings, |
| and 'p' for "Pascal strings" (with a leading length byte, included in |
| the size; blame Hannu Krosing; new in 1.5a4). A prefix '>' forces |
| big-endian data and '<' forces little-endian data; these also select |
| standard data sizes and disable automatic alignment (use pad bytes as |
| needed). |
| |
| - The array module supports uppercase format codes for unsigned data |
| formats (like the struct module). |
| |
| - The fcntl extension module now exports the needed symbolic |
| constants. (Formerly these were in FCNTL.py which was not available |
| or correct for all platforms.) |
| |
| - The extension modules dbm, gdbm and bsddb now check that the |
| database is still open before making any new calls. |
| |
| - The dbhash module is no more. Use bsddb instead. (There's a third |
| party interface for the BSD 2.x code somewhere on the web; support for |
| bsddb will be deprecated.) |
| |
| - The gdbm module now supports a sync() method. |
| |
| - The socket module now has some new functions: getprotobyname(), and |
| the set {ntoh,hton}{s,l}(). |
| |
| - Various modules now export their type object: socket.SocketType, |
| array.ArrayType. |
| |
| - The socket module's accept() method now returns unknown addresses as |
| a tuple rather than raising an exception. (This can happen in |
| promiscuous mode.) Theres' also a new function getprotobyname(). |
| |
| - The pthread support for the thread module now works on most platforms. |
| |
| - STDWIN is now officially obsolete. Support for it will eventually |
| be removed from the distribution. |
| |
| - The binascii extension module is now hopefully fully debugged. |
| (XXX Oops -- Fredrik Lundh promised me a uuencode fix that I never |
| received.) |
| |
| - audioop.c: added a ratecv() function; better handling of overflow in |
| add(). |
| |
| - posixmodule.c: now exports the O_* flags (O_APPEND etc.). On |
| Windows, also O_TEXT and O_BINARY. The 'error' variable (the |
| exception is raises) is renamed -- its string value is now "os.error", |
| so newbies don't believe they have to import posix (or nt) to catch |
| it when they see os.error reported as posix.error. The execve() |
| function now accepts any mapping object for the environment. |
| |
| - A new version of the al (audio library) module for SGI was |
| contributed by Sjoerd Mullender. |
| |
| - The regex module has a new function get_syntax() which retrieves the |
| syntax setting set by set_syntax(). The code was also sanitized, |
| removing worries about unclean error handling. See also below for its |
| successor, re.py. |
| |
| - The "new" module (which creates new objects of various types) once |
| again has a fully functioning new.function() method. Dangerous as |
| ever! Also, new.code() has several new arguments. |
| |
| - A problem has been fixed in the rotor module: on systems with signed |
| characters, rotor-encoded data was not portable when the key contained |
| 8-bit characters. Also, setkey() now requires its argument rather |
| than having broken code to default it. |
| |
| - The sys.builtin_module_names variable is now a tuple. Another new |
| variables in sys is sys.executable (the full path to the Python |
| binary, if known). |
| |
| - The specs for time.strftime() have undergone some revisions. It |
| appears that not all format characters are supported in the same way |
| on all platforms. Rather than reimplement it, we note these |
| differences in the documentation, and emphasize the shared set of |
| features. There's also a thorough test set (that occasionally finds |
| problems in the C library implementation, e.g. on some Linuxes), |
| thanks to Skip Montanaro. |
| |
| - The nis module seems broken when used with NIS+; unfortunately |
| nobody knows how to fix it. It should still work with old NIS. |
| |
| |
| New library modules |
| ------------------- |
| |
| - New (still experimental) Perl-style regular expression module, |
| re.py, which uses a new interface for matching as well as a new |
| syntax; the new interface avoids the thread-unsafety of the regex |
| interface. This comes with a helper extension reopmodule.c and vastly |
| rewritten regexpr.c. Most work on this was done by Jeffrey Ollie, Tim |
| Peters, and Andrew Kuchling. See the documentation libre.tex. In |
| 1.5, the old regex module is still fully supported; in the future, it |
| will become obsolete. |
| |
| - New module gzip.py; see zlib above. |
| |
| - New module keyword.py exports knowledge about Python's built-in |
| keywords. (New version by Ka-Ping Yee.) |
| |
| - New module pprint.py (with documentation) which supports |
| pretty-printing of lists, tuples, & dictionaries recursively. By Fred |
| Drake. |
| |
| - New module code.py. The function code.compile_command() can |
| determine whether an interactively entered command is complete or not, |
| distinguishing incomplete from invalid input. (XXX Unfortunately, |
| this seems broken at this moment, and I don't have the time to fix |
| it. It's probably better to add an explicit interface to the parser |
| for this.) |
| |
| - There is now a library module xdrlib.py which can read and write the |
| XDR data format as used by Sun RPC, for example. It uses the struct |
| module. |
| |
| |
| Changes in library modules |
| -------------------------- |
| |
| - Module codehack.py is now completely obsolete. |
| |
| - The pickle.py module has been updated to make it compatible with the |
| new binary format that cPickle.c produces. By default it produces the |
| old all-ASCII format compatible with the old pickle.py, still much |
| faster than pickle.py; it will read both formats automatically. A few |
| other updates have been made. |
| |
| - A new helper module, copy_reg.py, is provided to register extensions |
| to the pickling code. |
| |
| - Revamped module tokenize.py is much more accurate and has an |
| interface that makes it a breeze to write code to colorize Python |
| source code. Contributed by Ka-Ping Yee. |
| |
| - In ihooks.py, ModuleLoader.load_module() now closes the file under |
| all circumstances. |
| |
| - The tempfile.py module has a new class, TemporaryFile, which creates |
| an open temporary file that will be deleted automatically when |
| closed. This works on Windows and MacOS as well as on Unix. (Jim |
| Fulton.) |
| |
| - Changes to the cgi.py module: Most imports are now done at the |
| top of the module, which provides a speedup when using ni (Jim |
| Fulton). The problem with file upload to a Windows platform is solved |
| by using the new tempfile.TemporaryFile class; temporary files are now |
| always opened in binary mode (Jim Fulton). The cgi.escape() function |
| now takes an optional flag argument that quotes '"' to '"'. It |
| is now possible to invoke cgi.py from a command line script, to test |
| cgi scripts more easily outside an http server. There's an optional |
| limit to the size of uploads to POST (Skip Montanaro). Added a |
| 'strict_parsing' option to all parsing functions (Jim Fulton). The |
| function parse_qs() now uses urllib.unquote() on the name as well as |
| the value of fields (Clarence Gardner). The FieldStorage class now |
| has a __len__() method. |
| |
| - httplib.py: the socket object is no longer closed; all HTTP/1.* |
| responses are now accepted; and it is now thread-safe (by not using |
| the regex module). |
| |
| - BaseHTTPModule.py: treat all HTTP/1.* versions the same. |
| |
| - The popen2.py module is now rewritten using a class, which makes |
| access to the standard error stream and the process id of the |
| subprocess possible. |
| |
| - Added timezone support to the rfc822.py module, in the form of a |
| getdate_tz() method and a parsedate_tz() function; also a mktime_tz(). |
| Also added recognition of some non-standard date formats, by Lars |
| Wirzenius, and RFC 850 dates (Chris Lawrence). |
| |
| - mhlib.py: various enhancements, including almost compatible parsing |
| of message sequence specifiers without invoking a subprocess. Also |
| added a createmessage() method by Lars Wirzenius. |
| |
| - The StringIO.StringIO class now supports readline(nbytes). (Lars |
| Wirzenius.) (Of course, you should be using cStringIO for performance.) |
| |
| - UserDict.py supports the new dictionary methods as well. |
| |
| - Improvements for whrandom.py by Tim Peters: use 32-bit arithmetic to |
| speed it up, and replace 0 seed values by 1 to avoid degeneration. |
| A bug was fixed in the test for invalid arguments. |
| |
| - Module ftplib.py: added support for parsing a .netrc file (Fred |
| Drake). Also added an ntransfercmd() method to the FTP class, which |
| allows access to the expected size of a transfer when available, and a |
| parse150() function to the module which parses the corresponding 150 |
| response. |
| |
| - urllib.py: the ftp cache is now limited to 10 entries. Added |
| quote_plus() and unquote_plus() functions which are like quote() and |
| unquote() but also replace spaces with '+' or vice versa, for |
| encoding/decoding CGI form arguments. Catch all errors from the ftp |
| module. HTTP requests now add the Host: header line. The proxy |
| variable names are now mapped to lower case, for Windows. The |
| spliturl() function no longer erroneously throws away all data past |
| the first newline. The basejoin() function now intereprets "../" |
| correctly. I *believe* that the problems with "exception raised in |
| __del__" under certain circumstances have been fixed (mostly by |
| changes elsewher in the interpreter). |
| |
| - In urlparse.py, there is a cache for results in urlparse.urlparse(); |
| its size limit is set to 20. Also, new URL schemes shttp, https, and |
| snews are "supported". |
| |
| - shelve.py: use cPickle and cStringIO when available. Also added |
| a sync() method, which calls the database's sync() method if there is |
| one. |
| |
| - The mimetools.py module now uses the available Python modules for |
| decoding quoted-printable, uuencode and base64 formats, rather than |
| creating a subprocess. |
| |
| - The python debugger (pdb.py, and its base class bdb.py) now support |
| conditional breakpoints. See the docs. |
| |
| - The modules base64.py, uu.py and quopri.py can now be used as simple |
| command line utilities. |
| |
| - Various small fixes to the nntplib.py module that I can't bother to |
| document in detail. |
| |
| - Sjoerd Mullender's mimify.py module now supports base64 encoding and |
| includes functions to handle the funny encoding you sometimes see in mail |
| headers. It is now documented. |
| |
| - mailbox.py: Added BabylMailbox. Improved the way the mailbox is |
| gotten from the environment. |
| |
| - Many more modules now correctly open files in binary mode when this |
| is necessary on non-Unix platforms. |
| |
| - The copying functions in the undocumented module shutil.py are |
| smarter. |
| |
| - The Writer classes in the formatter.py module now have a flush() |
| method. |
| |
| - The sgmllib.py module accepts hyphens and periods in the middle of |
| attribute names. While this is against the SGML standard, there is |
| some HTML out there that uses this... |
| |
| - The interface for the Python bytecode disassembler module, dis.py, |
| has been enhanced quite a bit. There's now one main function, |
| dis.dis(), which takes almost any kind of object (function, module, |
| class, instance, method, code object) and disassembles it; without |
| arguments it disassembles the last frame of the last traceback. The |
| other functions have changed slightly, too. |
| |
| - The imghdr.py module recognizes new image types: BMP, PNG. |
| |
| - The string.py module has a new function replace(str, old, new, |
| [maxsplit]) which does substring replacements. It is actually |
| implemented in C in the strop module. The functions [r]find() an |
| [r]index() have an optional 4th argument indicating the end of the |
| substring to search, alsoo implemented by their strop counterparts. |
| (Remember, never import strop -- import string uses strop when |
| available with zero overhead.) |
| |
| - The string.join() function now accepts any sequence argument, not |
| just lists and tuples. |
| |
| - The string.maketrans() requires its first two arguments to be |
| present. The old version didn't require them, but there's not much |
| point without them, and the documentation suggests that they are |
| required, so we fixed the code to match the documentation. |
| |
| - The regsub.py module has a function clear_cache(), which clears its |
| internal cache of compiled regular expressions. Also, the cache now |
| takes the current syntax setting into account. (However, this module |
| is now obsolete -- use the sub() or subn() functions or methods in the |
| re module.) |
| |
| - The undocumented module Complex.py has been removed, now that Python |
| has built-in complex numbers. A similar module remains as |
| Demo/classes/Complex.py, as an example. |
| |
| |
| Changes to the build process |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| - The way GNU readline is configured is totally different. The |
| --with-readline configure option is gone. It is now an extension |
| module, which may be loaded dynamically. You must enable it (and |
| specify the correct linraries to link with) in the Modules/Setup file. |
| Importing the module installs some hooks which enable command line |
| editing. When the interpreter shell is invoked interactively, it |
| attempts to import the readline module; when this fails, the default |
| input mechanism is used. The hook variables are PyOS_InputHook and |
| PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer. (Code contributed by Lee Busby, with |
| ideas from William Magro.) |
| |
| - New build procedure: a single library, libpython1.5.a, is now built, |
| which contains absolutely everything except for a one-line main() |
| program (which calls Py_Main(argc, argv) to start the interpreter |
| shell). This makes life much simpler for applications that need to |
| embed Python. The serial number of the build is now included in the |
| version string (sys.version). |
| |
| - As far as I can tell, neither gcc -Wall nor the Microsoft compiler |
| emits a single warning any more when compiling Python. |
| |
| - A number of new Makefile variables have been added for special |
| situations, e.g. LDLAST is appended to the link command. These are |
| used by editing the Makefile or passing them on the make command |
| line. |
| |
| - A set of patches from Lee Busby has been integrated that make it |
| possible to catch floating point exceptions. Use the configure option |
| --with-fpectl to enable the patches; the extension modules fpectl and |
| fpetest provide control to enable/disable and test the feature, |
| respectively. |
| |
| - The support for shared libraries under AIX is now simpler and more |
| robust. Thanks to Vladimir Marangozov for revamping his own patches! |
| |
| - The Modules/makesetup script now reads a file Setup.local as well as |
| a file Setup. Most changes to the Setup script can be done by editing |
| Setup.local instead, which makes it easier to carry a particular setup |
| over from one release to the next. |
| |
| - The Modules/makesetup script now copies any "include" lines it |
| encounters verbatim into the output Makefile. It also recognizes .cxx |
| and .cpp as C++ source files. |
| |
| - The configure script is smarter about C compiler options; e.g. with |
| gcc it uses -O2 and -g when possible, and on some other platforms it |
| uses -Olimit 1500 to avoid a warning from the optimizer about the main |
| loop in ceval.c (which has more than 1000 basic blocks). |
| |
| - The configure script now detects whether malloc(0) returns a NULL |
| pointer or a valid block (of length zero). This avoids the nonsense |
| of always adding one byte to all malloc() arguments on most platforms. |
| |
| - The configure script has a new option, --with-dec-threads, to enable |
| DEC threads on DEC Alpha platforms. Also, --with-threads is now an |
| alias for --with-thread (this was the Most Common Typo in configure |
| arguments). |
| |
| - Many changes in Doc/Makefile; amongst others, latex2html is now used |
| to generate HTML from all latex documents. |
| |
| |
| Change to the Python/C API |
| -------------------------- |
| |
| - Because some interfaces have changed, the PYTHON_API macro has been |
| bumped. Most extensions built for the old API version will still run, |
| but I can't guarantee this. Python prints a warning message on |
| version mismatches; it dumps core when the version mismatch causes a |
| serious problem :-) |
| |
| - I've completed the Grand Renaming, with the help of Roger Masse and |
| Barry Warsaw. This makes reading or debugging the code much easier. |
| Many other unrelated code reorganizations have also been carried out. |
| The allobjects.h header file is gone; instead, you would have to |
| include Python.h followed by rename2.h. But you're better off running |
| Tools/scripts/fixcid.py -s Misc/RENAME on your source, so you can omit |
| the rename2.h; it will disappear in the next release. |
| |
| - Various and sundry small bugs in the "abstract" interfaces have been |
| fixed. Thanks to all the (involuntary) testers of the Python 1.4 |
| version! Some new functions have been added, e.g. PySequence_List(o), |
| equivalent to list(o) in Python. |
| |
| - New API functions PyLong_FromUnsignedLong() and |
| PyLong_AsUnsignedLong(). |
| |
| - The API functions in the file cgensupport.c are no longer |
| supported. This file has been moved to Modules and is only ever |
| compiled when the SGI specific 'gl' module is built. |
| |
| - PyObject_Compare() can now raise an exception. Check with |
| PyErr_Occurred(). The comparison function in an object type may also |
| raise an exception. |
| |
| - The slice interface uses an upper bound of INT_MAX when no explicit |
| upper bound is given (e.x. for a[1:]). It used to ask the object for |
| its length and do the calculations. |
| |
| - Support for multiple independent interpreters. See Doc/api.tex, |
| functions Py_NewInterpreter() and Py_EndInterpreter(). Since the |
| documentation is incomplete, also see the new Demo/pysvr example |
| (which shows how to use these in a threaded application) and the |
| source code. |
| |
| - There is now a Py_Finalize() function which "de-initializes" |
| Python. It is possible to completely restart the interpreter |
| repeatedly by calling Py_Finalize() followed by Py_Initialize(). A |
| change of functionality in Py_Initialize() means that it is now a |
| fatal error to call it while the interpreter is already initialized. |
| The old, half-hearted Py_Cleanup() routine is gone. Use of Py_Exit() |
| is deprecated (it is nothing more than Py_Finalize() followed by |
| exit()). |
| |
| - There are no known memory leaks left. While Py_Finalize() doesn't |
| free *all* allocated memory (some of it is hard to track down), |
| repeated calls to Py_Finalize() and Py_Initialize() do not create |
| unaccessible heap blocks. |
| |
| - There is now explicit per-thread state. (Inspired by, but not the |
| same as, Greg Stein's free threading patches.) |
| |
| - There is now better support for threading C applications. There are |
| now explicit APIs to manipulate the interpreter lock. Read the source |
| or the Demo/pysvr example; the new functions are |
| PyEval_{Acquire,Release}{Lock,Thread}(). |
| |
| - The test macro DEBUG has changed to Py_DEBUG, to avoid interference |
| with other libraries' DEBUG macros. Likewise for any other test |
| macros that didn't yet start with Py_. |
| |
| - New wrappers around malloc() and friends: Py_Malloc() etc. call |
| malloc() and call PyErr_NoMemory() when it fails; PyMem_Malloc() call |
| just malloc(). Use of these wrappers could be essential if multiple |
| memory allocators exist (e.g. when using certain DLL setups under |
| Windows). (Idea by Jim Fulton.) |
| |
| - New C API PyImport_Import() which uses whatever __import__() hook |
| that is installed for the current execution environment. By Jim |
| Fulton. |
| |
| - It is now possible for an extension module's init function to fail |
| non-fatally, by calling one of the PyErr_* functions and returning. |
| |
| - The PyInt_AS_LONG() and PyFloat_AS_DOUBLE() macros now cast their |
| argument to the proper type, like the similar PyString macros already |
| did. (Suggestion by Marc-Andre Lemburg.) Similar for PyList_GET_SIZE |
| and PyList_GET_ITEM. |
| |
| - Some of the Py_Get* function, like Py_GetVersion() (but not yet |
| Py_GetPath()) are now declared as returning a const char *. (More |
| should follow.) |
| |
| - Changed the run-time library to check for exceptions after object |
| comparisons. PyObject_Compare() can now return an exception; use |
| PyErr_Occurred() to check (there is *no* special return value). |
| |
| - PyFile_WriteString() and Py_Flushline() now return error indicators |
| instead of clearing exceptions. This fixes an obscure bug where using |
| these would clear a pending exception, discovered by Just van Rossum. |
| |
| - There's a new function, PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(), which parses |
| an argument list including keyword arguments. Contributed by Geoff |
| Philbrick. |
| |
| - PyArg_GetInt() is gone. |
| |
| - It's no longer necessary to include graminit.h when calling one of |
| the extended parser API functions. The three public grammar start |
| symbols are now in Python.h as Py_single_input, Py_file_input, and |
| Py_eval_input. |
| |
| - The CObject interface has a new function, |
| PyCObject_Import(module, name). It calls PyCObject_AsVoidPtr() |
| on the object referenced by "module.name". |
| |
| |
| Tkinter |
| ------- |
| |
| - On popular demand, _tkinter once again installs a hook for readline |
| that processes certain Tk events while waiting for the user to type |
| (using PyOS_InputHook). |
| |
| - A patch by Craig McPheeters plugs the most obnoxious memory leaks, |
| caused by command definitions referencing widget objects beyond their |
| lifetime. |
| |
| - New standard dialog modules: tkColorChooser.py, tkCommonDialog.py, |
| tkMessageBox.py, tkFileDialog.py, tkSimpleDialog.py These interface |
| with the new Tk dialog scripts, and provide more "native platform" |
| style file selection dialog boxes on some platforms. Contributed by |
| Fredrik Lundh. |
| |
| - Tkinter.py: when the first Tk object is destroyed, it sets the |
| hiddel global _default_root to None, so that when another Tk object is |
| created it becomes the new default root. Other miscellaneous |
| changes and fixes. |
| |
| - The Image class now has a configure method. |
| |
| - Added a bunch of new winfo options to Tkinter.py; we should now be |
| up to date with Tk 4.2. The new winfo options supported are: |
| mananger, pointerx, pointerxy, pointery, server, viewable, visualid, |
| visualsavailable. |
| |
| - The broken bind() method on Canvas objects defined in the Canvas.py |
| module has been fixed. The CanvasItem and Group classes now also have |
| an unbind() method. |
| |
| - The problem with Tkinter.py falling back to trying to import |
| "tkinter" when "_tkinter" is not found has been fixed -- it no longer |
| tries "tkinter", ever. This makes diagnosing the problem "_tkinter |
| not configured" much easier and will hopefully reduce the newsgroup |
| traffic on this topic. |
| |
| - The ScrolledText module once again supports the 'cnf' parameter, to |
| be compatible with the examples in Mark Lutz' book (I know, I know, |
| too late...) |
| |
| - The _tkinter.c extension module has been revamped. It now support |
| Tk versions 4.1 through 8.0; support for 4.0 has been dropped. It |
| works well under Windows and Mac (with the latest Tk ports to those |
| platforms). It also supports threading -- it is safe for one |
| (Python-created) thread to be blocked in _tkinter.mainloop() while |
| other threads modify widgets. To make the changes visible, those |
| threads must use update_idletasks()method. (The patch for threading |
| in 1.5a3 was broken; in 1.5a4, it is back in a different version, |
| which requires access to the Tcl sources to get it to work -- hence it |
| is disabled by default.) |
| |
| - A bug in _tkinter.c has been fixed, where Split() with a string |
| containing an unmatched '"' could cause an exception or core dump. |
| |
| - Unfortunately, on Windows and Mac, Tk 8.0 no longer supports |
| CreateFileHandler, so _tkinter.createfilehandler is not available on |
| those platforms when using Tk 8.0 or later. I will have to rethink |
| how to interface with Tcl's lower-level event mechanism, or with its |
| channels (which are like Python's file-like objects). Jack Jansen has |
| provided a fix for the Mac, so createfilehandler *is* actually |
| supported there; maybe I can adapt his fix for Windows. |
| |
| |
| Tools and Demos |
| --------------- |
| |
| - A new regression test suite is provided, which tests most of the |
| standard and built-in modules. The regression test is run by invoking |
| the script Lib/test/regrtest.py. Barry Warsaw wrote the test harnass; |
| he and Roger Masse contributed most of the new tests. |
| |
| - New tool: faqwiz -- the CGI script that is used to maintain the |
| Python FAQ (http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/cgi-bin/faqw.py). In |
| Tools/faqwiz. |
| |
| - New tool: webchecker -- a simple extensible web robot that, when |
| aimed at a web server, checks that server for dead links. Available |
| are a command line utility as well as a Tkinter based GUI version. In |
| Tools/webchecker. A simplified version of this program is dissected |
| in my article in O'Reilly's WWW Journal, the issue on Scripting |
| Languages (Vol 2, No 2); Scripting the Web with Python (pp 97-120). |
| Includes a parser for robots.txt files by Skip Montanaro. |
| |
| - New small tools: cvsfiles.py (prints a list of all files under CVS |
| n a particular directory tree), treesync.py (a rather Guido-specific |
| script to synchronize two source trees, one on Windows NT, the other |
| one on Unix under CVS but accessible from the NT box), and logmerge.py |
| (sort a collection of RCS or CVS logs by date). In Tools/scripts. |
| |
| - The freeze script now also works under Windows (NT). Another |
| feature allows the -p option to be pointed at the Python source tree |
| instead of the installation prefix. This was loosely based on part of |
| xfreeze by Sam Rushing and Bill Tutt. |
| |
| - New examples (Demo/extend) that show how to use the generic |
| extension makefile (Misc/Makefile.pre.in). |
| |
| - Tools/scripts/h2py.py now supports C++ comments. |
| |
| - Tools/scripts/pystone.py script is upgraded to version 1.1; there |
| was a bug in version 1.0 (distributed with Python 1.4) that leaked |
| memory. Also, in 1.1, the LOOPS variable is incremented to 10000. |
| |
| - Demo/classes/Rat.py completely rewritten by Sjoerd Mullender. |
| |
| |
| Windows (NT and 95) |
| ------------------- |
| |
| - New project files for Developer Studio (Visual C++) 5.0 for Windows |
| NT (the old VC++ 4.2 Makefile is also still supported, but will |
| eventually be withdrawn due to its bulkiness). |
| |
| - See the note on the new module search path in the "Miscellaneous" section |
| above. |
| |
| - Support for Win32s (the 32-bit Windows API under Windows 3.1) is |
| basically withdrawn. If it still works for you, you're lucky. |
| |
| - There's a new extension module, msvcrt.c, which provides various |
| low-level operations defined in the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library. |
| These include locking(), setmode(), get_osfhandle(), set_osfhandle(), and |
| console I/O functions like kbhit(), getch() and putch(). |
| |
| - The -u option not only sets the standard I/O streams to unbuffered |
| status, but also sets them in binary mode. (This can also be done |
| using msvcrt.setmode(), by the way.) |
| |
| - The, sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix variables point to the directory |
| where Python is installed, or to the top of the source tree, if it was run |
| from there. |
| |
| - The various os.path modules (posixpath, ntpath, macpath) now support |
| passing more than two arguments to the join() function, so |
| os.path.join(a, b, c) is the same as os.path.join(a, os.path.join(b, |
| c)). |
| |
| - The ntpath module (normally used as os.path) supports ~ to $HOME |
| expansion in expanduser(). |
| |
| - The freeze tool now works on Windows. |
| |
| - See also the Tkinter category for a sad note on |
| _tkinter.createfilehandler(). |
| |
| - The truncate() method for file objects now works on Windows. |
| |
| - Py_Initialize() is no longer called when the DLL is loaded. You |
| must call it yourself. |
| |
| - The time module's clock() function now has good precision through |
| the use of the Win32 API QueryPerformanceCounter(). |
| |
| - Mark Hammond will release Python 1.5 versions of PythonWin and his |
| other Windows specific code: the win32api extensions, COM/ActiveX |
| support, and the MFC interface. |
| |
| |
| Mac |
| --- |
| |
| - As always, the Macintosh port will be done by Jack Jansen. He will |
| make a separate announcement for the Mac specific source code and the |
| binary distribution(s) when these are ready. |
| |
| |
| ====================================================================== |