Guido van Rossum | 02afd08 | 1996-10-22 02:16:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 1 | ===================================== |
| 2 | ==> Release 1.4 (October 25 1996) <== |
| 3 | ===================================== |
| 4 | |
| 5 | (XXX Sorry, this is in totally random order. I hope I can find the |
| 6 | time to fix it.) |
| 7 | |
| 8 | - Changed copyright. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | - SyntaxError exceptions detected during code generation |
| 11 | (e.g. assignment to an expression) now include a line number. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | - Don't leave trailing / or \ in script directory inserted in front of |
| 14 | sys.path. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | - Added a note to Tools/scripts/classfix.py abouts its historical |
| 17 | importance. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | - Added Misc/Makefile.pre.in, a universal Makefile for extensions |
| 20 | built outside the distribution. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | - Rewritten Misc/faq2html.py, by Ka-Ping Yee. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | - Install shared modules with mode 555 (needed for performance on some |
| 25 | platforms). |
| 26 | |
| 27 | - Some changes to standard library modules to avoid calling append() |
| 28 | with more than one argument -- while supported, this should be |
| 29 | outlawed, and I don't want to set a bad example. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | - bdb.py (and hence pdb.py) supports calling run() with a code object |
| 32 | instead of a code string. |
| 33 | |
| 34 | - Fixed an embarrassing bug cgi.py which prevented correct uploading |
| 35 | of binary files from Netscape (which doesn't distinguish between |
| 36 | binary and text files). Also added dormant logging support, which |
| 37 | makes it easier to debug the cgi module itself. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | - Added default writer to constructor of NullFormatter class. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | - Use binary mode for socket.makefile() calls in ftplib.py. |
| 42 | |
| 43 | - The ihooks module no longer "installs" itself upon import -- this |
| 44 | was an experimental feature that helped ironing out some bugs but that |
| 45 | slowed down code that imported it without the need to install it |
| 46 | (e.g. the rexec module). Also close the file in some cases and add |
| 47 | the __file__ attribute to loaded modules. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | - The test program for mailbox.py is now more useful. |
| 50 | |
| 51 | - Added getparamnames() to Message class in mimetools.py -- it returns |
| 52 | the names of parameters to the content-type header. |
| 53 | |
| 54 | - Fixed a typo in ni that broke the loop stripping "__." from names. |
| 55 | |
| 56 | - Fix sys.path[0] for scripts run via pdb.py's new main program. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | - profile.py can now also run a script, like pdb. |
| 59 | |
| 60 | - Fix a small bug in pyclbr -- don't add names starting with _ when |
| 61 | emulating from ... import *. |
| 62 | |
| 63 | - Fixed a series of embarrassing typos in rexec's handling of standard |
| 64 | I/O redirection. Added some more "safe" built-in modules: cmath, |
| 65 | errno, operator. |
| 66 | |
| 67 | - Fixed embarrassing typo in shelve.py. |
| 68 | |
| 69 | - Added SliceType and EllipsisType to types.py. |
| 70 | |
| 71 | - In urllib.py, added handling for error 301 (same as 302); added |
| 72 | geturl() method to get the URL after redirection. |
| 73 | |
| 74 | - Fixed embarrassing typo in xdrlib.py. Also fixed typo in Setup.in |
| 75 | for _xdrmodule.c and removed redundant #include from _xdrmodule.c. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | - Fixed bsddbmodule.c to add binary mode indicator on platforms that |
| 78 | have it. This should make it working on Windows NT. |
| 79 | |
| 80 | - Changed last uses of #ifdef NT to #ifdef MS_WINDOWS or MS_WIN32, |
| 81 | whatever applies. Also rationalized some other tests for various MS |
| 82 | platforms. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | - Added the sources for the NT installer script used for Python |
| 85 | 1.4beta3. Not tested with this release, but better than nothing. |
| 86 | |
| 87 | - A compromise in pickle's defenses against Trojan horses: a |
| 88 | user-defined function is now okay where a class is expected. A |
| 89 | built-in function is not okay, to prevent pickling something that |
| 90 | will execute os.system("rm -f *") when unpickling. |
| 91 | |
| 92 | - dis.py will print the name of local variables referenced by local |
| 93 | load/store/delete instructions. |
| 94 | |
| 95 | - Improved portability of SimpleHttpServer module to non-Unix |
| 96 | platform. |
| 97 | |
| 98 | - The thread.h interface adds an extra argument to down_sema(). This |
| 99 | only affects other C code that uses thread.c; the Python thread module |
| 100 | doesn't use semaphores (which aren't provided on all platforms where |
| 101 | Python threads are supported). Note: on NT, this change is not |
| 102 | implemented. |
| 103 | |
| 104 | - Fixed some typos in abstract.h; corrected signature of |
| 105 | PyNumber_Coerce, added PyMapping_DelItem. Also fixed a bug in |
| 106 | abstract.c's PyObject_CallMethod(). |
| 107 | |
| 108 | - apply(classname, (), {}) now works even if the class has no |
| 109 | __init__() method. |
| 110 | |
| 111 | - Implemented complex remainder and divmod() (these would dump core!). |
| 112 | Conversion of complex numbers to int, long int or float now raises an |
| 113 | exception, since there is no meaningful way to do it without losing |
| 114 | information. |
| 115 | |
| 116 | - Fixed bug in built-in complex() function which gave the wrong result |
| 117 | for two real arguments. |
| 118 | |
| 119 | - Change the hash algorithm for strings -- the multiplier is now |
| 120 | 1000003 instead of 3, which gives better spread for short strings. |
| 121 | |
| 122 | - New default path for Windows NT, the registry structure now supports |
| 123 | default paths for different install packages. (Mark Hammond -- the |
| 124 | next PythonWin release will use this.) |
| 125 | |
| 126 | - Added more symbols to the python_nt.def file. |
| 127 | |
| 128 | - When using GNU readline, set rl_readline_name to "python". |
| 129 | |
| 130 | - The Ellipses built-in name has been renamed to Ellipsis -- this is |
| 131 | the correct singular form. Thanks to Ka-Ping Yee, who saved us from |
| 132 | eternal embarrassment. |
| 133 | |
| 134 | - Bumped the PYTHON_API_VERSION to 1006, due to the Ellipses -> |
| 135 | Ellipsis name change. |
| 136 | |
| 137 | - Updated the library reference manual. Added documentation of |
| 138 | restricted mode (rexec, Bastion) and the formatter module (for use |
| 139 | with the htmllib module). Fixed the documentation of htmllib |
| 140 | (finally). |
| 141 | |
| 142 | - The reference manual is now maintained in FrameMaker. |
| 143 | |
| 144 | - Upgraded scripts Doc/partparse.py and Doc/texi2html.py. |
| 145 | |
| 146 | - Slight improvements to Doc/Makefile. |
| 147 | |
| 148 | - Added fcntl.lockf(). This should be used for Unix file locking |
| 149 | instead of the posixfile module; lockf() is more portable. |
| 150 | |
| 151 | - The getopt module now supports long option names, thanks to Lars |
| 152 | Wizenius. |
| 153 | |
| 154 | - Plenty of changes to Tkinter and Canvas, mostly due to Fred Drake |
| 155 | and Nils Fischbeck. |
| 156 | |
| 157 | - Use more bits of time.time() in whrandom's default seed(). |
| 158 | |
| 159 | - Performance hack for regex module's regs attribute. |
| 160 | |
| 161 | - Don't close already closed socket in socket module. |
| 162 | |
| 163 | - Correctly handle separators containing embedded nulls in |
| 164 | strop.split, strop.find and strop.rfind. Also added more detail to |
| 165 | error message for strop.atoi and friends. |
| 166 | |
| 167 | - Moved fallback definition for hypot() to Python/hypot.c. |
| 168 | |
| 169 | - Added fallback definition for strdup, in Python/strdup.c. |
| 170 | |
| 171 | - Fixed some bugs where a function would return 0 to indicate an error |
| 172 | where it should return -1. |
| 173 | |
| 174 | - Test for error returned by time.localtime(), and rationalized its MS |
| 175 | tests. |
| 176 | |
| 177 | - Added Modules/Setup.local file, which is processed after Setup. |
| 178 | |
| 179 | - Corrected bug in toplevel Makefile.in -- execution of regen script |
| 180 | would not use the right PATH and PYTHONPATH. |
| 181 | |
| 182 | - Various and sundry NeXT configuration changes (sigh). |
| 183 | |
| 184 | - Support systems where libreadline needs neither termcap nor curses. |
| 185 | |
| 186 | - Improved ld_so_aix script and python.exp file (for AIX). |
| 187 | |
| 188 | - More stringent test for working <stdarg.h> in configure script. |
| 189 | |
| 190 | - Removed Demo/www subdirectory -- it was totally out of date. |
| 191 | |
| 192 | - Improved demos and docs for Fred Drake's parser module; fixed one |
| 193 | typo in the module itself. |
| 194 | |
| 195 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5f9aa9e | 1996-08-26 18:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 196 | ========================================= |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 197 | ==> Release 1.4beta3 (August 26 1996) <== |
Guido van Rossum | 5f9aa9e | 1996-08-26 18:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 198 | ========================================= |
Guido van Rossum | 635649f | 1994-11-10 23:04:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 199 | |
Guido van Rossum | 635649f | 1994-11-10 23:04:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 200 | |
Guido van Rossum | 02afd08 | 1996-10-22 02:16:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 201 | (XXX This is less readable that it should. I promise to restructure |
| 202 | it for the final 1.4 release.) |
Guido van Rossum | 5f9aa9e | 1996-08-26 18:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 203 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 204 | |
| 205 | What's new in 1.4beta3 (since beta2)? |
| 206 | ------------------------------------- |
| 207 | |
Guido van Rossum | 02afd08 | 1996-10-22 02:16:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 208 | - Name mangling to implement a simple form of class-private variables. |
| 209 | A name of the form "__spam" can't easily be used outside the class. |
| 210 | (This was added in 1.4beta3, but left out of the 1.4beta3 release |
| 211 | message.) |
| 212 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5f9aa9e | 1996-08-26 18:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 213 | - In urllib.urlopen(): HTTP URLs containing user:passwd@host are now |
| 214 | handled correctly when using a proxy server. |
| 215 | |
| 216 | - In ntpath.normpath(): don't truncate to 8+3 format. |
| 217 | |
| 218 | - In mimetools.choose_boundary(): don't die when getuid() or getpid() |
| 219 | aren't defined. |
| 220 | |
| 221 | - Module urllib: some optimizations to (un)quoting. |
| 222 | |
| 223 | - New module MimeWriter for writing MIME documents. |
| 224 | |
| 225 | - More changes to formatter module. |
| 226 | |
| 227 | - The freeze script works once again and is much more robust (using |
| 228 | sys.prefix etc.). It also supports a -o option to specify an |
| 229 | output directory. |
| 230 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 231 | - New module whichdb recognizes dbm, gdbm and bsddb/dbhash files. |
| 232 | |
| 233 | - The Doc/Makefile targets have been reorganized somewhat to remove the |
| 234 | insistence on always generating PostScript. |
| 235 | |
| 236 | - The texinfo to html filter (Doc/texi2html.py) has been improved somewhat. |
| 237 | |
| 238 | - "errors.h" has been renamed to "pyerrors.h" to resolve a long-standing |
| 239 | name conflict on the Mac. |
| 240 | |
| 241 | - Linking a module compiled with a different setting for Py_TRACE_REFS now |
| 242 | generates a linker error rather than a core dump. |
| 243 | |
| 244 | - The cgi module has a new convenience function print_exception(), which |
| 245 | formats a python exception using HTML. It also fixes a bug in the |
| 246 | compatibility code and adds a dubious feature which makes it possible to |
| 247 | have two query strings, one in the URL and one in the POST data. |
| 248 | |
| 249 | - A subtle change in the unpickling of class instances makes it possible |
| 250 | to unpickle in restricted execution mode, where the __dict__ attribute is |
| 251 | not available (but setattr() is). |
| 252 | |
| 253 | - Documentation for os.path.splitext() (== posixpath.splitext()) has been |
| 254 | cleared up. It splits at the *last* dot. |
| 255 | |
| 256 | - posixfile locking is now also correctly supported on AIX. |
| 257 | |
| 258 | - The tempfile module once again honors an initial setting of tmpdir. It |
| 259 | now works on Windows, too. |
| 260 | |
| 261 | - The traceback module has some new functions to extract, format and print |
| 262 | the active stack. |
| 263 | |
| 264 | - Some translation functions in the urllib module have been made a little |
| 265 | less sluggish. |
| 266 | |
| 267 | - The addtag_* methods for Canvas widgets in Tkinter as well as in the |
| 268 | separate Canvas class have been fixed so they actually do something |
| 269 | meaningful. |
| 270 | |
| 271 | - A tiny _test() function has been added to Tkinter.py. |
| 272 | |
| 273 | - A generic Makefile for dynamically loaded modules is provided in the Misc |
| 274 | subdirectory (Misc/gMakefile). |
| 275 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5f9aa9e | 1996-08-26 18:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 276 | - A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs is provided. See |
| 277 | http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for details. The |
| 278 | separate file pyimenu.el is no longer needed, imenu support is folded |
| 279 | into python-mode.el. |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 280 | |
| 281 | - The configure script can finally correctly find the readline library in a |
| 282 | non-standard location. The LDFLAGS variable is passed on the the Makefiles |
| 283 | from the configure script. |
| 284 | |
| 285 | - Shared libraries are now installed as programs (i.e. with executable |
| 286 | permission). This is required on HP-UX and won't hurt on other systems. |
| 287 | |
| 288 | - The objc.c module is no longer part of the distribution. Objective-C |
| 289 | support may become available as contributed software on the ftp site. |
| 290 | |
Guido van Rossum | 02afd08 | 1996-10-22 02:16:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 291 | - The sybase module is no longer part of the distribution. A much |
| 292 | improved sybase module is available as contributed software from the |
| 293 | ftp site. |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 294 | |
| 295 | - _tkinter is now compatible with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 patch1 on Windows and |
| 296 | Mac (don't use unpatched Tcl/Tk!). The default line in the Setup.in file |
| 297 | now links with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 rather than 7.4/4.0. |
| 298 | |
| 299 | - In Setup, you can now write "*shared*" instead of "*noconfig*", and you |
| 300 | can use *.so and *.sl as shared libraries. |
| 301 | |
| 302 | - Some more fidgeting for AIX shared libraries. |
| 303 | |
| 304 | - The mpz module is now compatible with GMP 2.x. (Not tested by me.) |
Guido van Rossum | 5f9aa9e | 1996-08-26 18:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 305 | (Note -- a complete replacement by Niels Mo"ller, called gpmodule, is |
| 306 | available from the contrib directory on the ftp site.) |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 307 | |
| 308 | - A warning is written to sys.stderr when a __del__ method raises an |
| 309 | exception (formerly, such exceptions were completely ignored). |
| 310 | |
| 311 | - The configure script now defines HAVE_OLD_CPP if the C preprocessor is |
| 312 | incapable of ANSI style token concatenation and stringification. |
| 313 | |
| 314 | - All source files (except a few platform specific modules) are once again |
| 315 | compatible with K&R C compilers as well as ANSI compilers. In particular, |
| 316 | ANSI-isms have been removed or made conditional in complexobject.c, |
| 317 | getargs.c and operator.c. |
| 318 | |
| 319 | - The abstract object API has three new functions, PyObject_DelItem, |
| 320 | PySequence_DelItem, and PySequence_DelSlice. |
| 321 | |
| 322 | - The operator module has new functions delitem and delslice, and the |
| 323 | functions "or" and "and" are renamed to "or_" and "and_" (since "or" and |
| 324 | "and" are reserved words). ("__or__" and "__and__" are unchanged.) |
| 325 | |
| 326 | - The environment module is no longer supported; putenv() is now a function |
| 327 | in posixmodule (also under NT). |
| 328 | |
| 329 | - Error in filter(<function>, "") has been fixed. |
| 330 | |
| 331 | - Unrecognized keyword arguments raise TypeError, not KeyError. |
| 332 | |
| 333 | - Better portability, fewer bugs and memory leaks, fewer compiler warnings, |
| 334 | some more documentation. |
| 335 | |
| 336 | - Bug in float power boundary case (0.0 to the negative integer power) |
| 337 | fixed. |
| 338 | |
| 339 | - The test of negative number to the float power has been moved from the |
| 340 | built-in pow() functin to floatobject.c (so complex numbers can yield the |
| 341 | correct result). |
| 342 | |
| 343 | - The bug introduced in beta2 where shared libraries loaded (using |
| 344 | dlopen()) from the current directory would fail, has been fixed. |
| 345 | |
| 346 | - Modules imported as shared libraries now also have a __file__ attribute, |
| 347 | giving the filename from which they were loaded. The only modules without |
| 348 | a __file__ attribute now are built-in modules. |
| 349 | |
| 350 | - On the Mac, dynamically loaded modules can end in either ".slb" or |
| 351 | ".<platform>.slb" where <platform> is either "CFM68K" or "ppc". The ".slb" |
| 352 | extension should only be used for "fat" binaries. |
| 353 | |
| 354 | - C API addition: marshal.c now supports |
| 355 | PyMarshal_WriteObjectToString(object). |
| 356 | |
| 357 | - C API addition: getargs.c now supports |
| 358 | PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(args, kwdict, format, kwnames, ...) |
| 359 | to parse keyword arguments. |
| 360 | |
| 361 | - The PC versioning scheme (sys.winver) has changed once again. the |
| 362 | version number is now "<digit>.<digit>.<digit>.<apiversion>", where the |
| 363 | first three <digit>s are the Python version (e.g. "1.4.0" for Python 1.4, |
| 364 | "1.4.1" for Python 1.4.1 -- the beta level is not included) and |
| 365 | <apiversion> is the four-digit PYTHON_API_VERSION (currently 1005). |
| 366 | |
| 367 | - h2py.py accepts whitespace before the # in CPP directives |
| 368 | |
| 369 | - On Solaris 2.5, it should now be possible to use either Posix threads or |
| 370 | Solaris threads (XXX: how do you select which is used???). (Note: the |
| 371 | Python pthreads interface doesn't fully support semaphores yet -- anyone |
| 372 | care to fix this?) |
| 373 | |
| 374 | - Thread support should now work on AIX, using either DCE threads or |
| 375 | pthreads. |
| 376 | |
| 377 | - New file Demo/sockets/unicast.py |
| 378 | |
| 379 | - Working Mac port, with CFM68K support, with Tk 4.1 support (though not |
| 380 | both) (XXX) |
| 381 | |
| 382 | - New project setup for PC port, now compatible with PythonWin, with |
| 383 | _tkinter and NumPy support (XXX) |
| 384 | |
| 385 | - New module site.py (XXX) |
| 386 | |
| 387 | - New module xdrlib.py and optional support module _xdrmodule.c (XXX) |
| 388 | |
| 389 | - parser module adapted to new grammar, complete w/ Doc & Demo (XXX) |
| 390 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 391 | - regen script fixed (XXX) |
| 392 | |
| 393 | - new machdep subdirectories Lib/{aix3,aix4,next3_3,freebsd2,linux2} (XXX) |
| 394 | |
| 395 | - testall now also tests math module (XXX) |
| 396 | |
| 397 | - string.atoi c.s. now raise an exception for an empty input string. |
| 398 | |
| 399 | - At last, it is no longer necessary to define HAVE_CONFIG_H in order to |
| 400 | have config.h included at various places. |
| 401 | |
| 402 | - Unrecognized keyword arguments now raise TypeError rather than KeyError. |
| 403 | |
| 404 | - The makesetup script recognizes files with extension .so or .sl as |
| 405 | (shared) libraries. |
| 406 | |
| 407 | - 'access' is no longer a reserved word, and all code related to its |
| 408 | implementation is gone (or at least #ifdef'ed out). This should make |
| 409 | Python a little speedier too! |
| 410 | |
| 411 | - Performance enhancements suggested by Sjoerd Mullender. This includes |
| 412 | the introduction of two new optional function pointers in type object, |
| 413 | getattro and setattro, which are like getattr and setattr but take a |
| 414 | string object instead of a C string pointer. |
| 415 | |
| 416 | - New operations in string module: lstrip(s) and rstrip(s) strip whitespace |
| 417 | only on the left or only on the right, A new optional third argument to |
| 418 | split() specifies the maximum number of separators honored (so |
| 419 | splitfields(s, sep, n) returns a list of at most n+1 elements). (Since |
| 420 | 1.3, splitfields(s, None) is totally equivalent to split(s).) |
| 421 | string.capwords() has an optional second argument specifying the |
| 422 | separator (which is passed to split()). |
| 423 | |
| 424 | - regsub.split() has the same addition as string.split(). regsub.splitx(s, |
| 425 | sep, maxsep) implements the functionality that was regsub.split(s, 1) in |
| 426 | 1.4beta2 (return a list containing the delimiters as well as the words). |
| 427 | |
| 428 | - Final touch for AIX loading, rewritten Misc/AIX-NOTES. |
| 429 | |
| 430 | - In Modules/_tkinter.c, when using Tk 4.1 or higher, use className |
| 431 | argument to _tkinter.create() to set Tcl's argv0 variable, so X |
| 432 | resources use the right resource class again. |
| 433 | |
| 434 | - Add #undef fabs to Modules/mathmodule.c for macintosh. |
| 435 | |
| 436 | - Added some macro renames for AIX in Modules/operator.c. |
| 437 | |
| 438 | - Removed spurious 'E' from Doc/liberrno.tex. |
| 439 | |
| 440 | - Got rid of some cruft in Misc/ (dlMakefile, pyimenu.el); added new |
| 441 | Misc/gMakefile and new version of Misc/python-mode.el. |
| 442 | |
| 443 | - Fixed typo in Lib/ntpath.py (islink has "return false" which gives a |
| 444 | NameError). |
| 445 | |
| 446 | - Added missing "from types import *" to Lib/tkinter/Canvas.py. |
| 447 | |
| 448 | - Added hint about using default args for __init__ to pickle docs. |
| 449 | |
| 450 | - Corrected typo in Inclide/abstract.h: PySequence_Lenth -> |
| 451 | PySequence_Length. |
| 452 | |
| 453 | - Some improvements to Doc/texi2html.py. |
| 454 | |
| 455 | - In Python/import.c, Cast unsigned char * in struct _frozen to char * |
| 456 | in calls to rds_object(). |
| 457 | |
| 458 | - In doc/ref4.tex, added note about scope of lambda bodies. |
| 459 | |
| 460 | What's new in 1.4beta2 (since beta1)? |
| 461 | ------------------------------------- |
Guido van Rossum | 635649f | 1994-11-10 23:04:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 462 | |
Guido van Rossum | ccdfce3 | 1996-07-30 21:34:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 463 | - Portability bug in the md5.h header solved. |
Guido van Rossum | 0082c1a | 1995-04-10 11:52:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 464 | |
Guido van Rossum | ccdfce3 | 1996-07-30 21:34:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 465 | - The PC build procedure now really works, and sets sys.platform to a |
| 466 | meaningful value (a few things were botched in beta 1). Lib/dos_8x3 |
| 467 | is now a standard part of the distribution (alas). |
Guido van Rossum | 635649f | 1994-11-10 23:04:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 468 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 469 | - More improvements to the installation procedure. Typing "make install" |
| 470 | now inserts the version number in the pathnames of almost everything |
| 471 | installed, and creates the machine dependent modules (FCNTL.py etc.) if not |
| 472 | supplied by the distribution. (XXX There's still a problem with the latter |
| 473 | because the "regen" script requires that Python is installed. Some manual |
| 474 | intervention may still be required.) (This has been fixed in 1.4beta3.) |
Guido van Rossum | 061f182 | 1994-10-06 16:03:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 475 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 476 | - New modules: errno, operator (XXX). |
Guido van Rossum | 061f182 | 1994-10-06 16:03:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 477 | |
Guido van Rossum | ccdfce3 | 1996-07-30 21:34:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 478 | - Changes for use with Numerical Python: builtin function slice() and |
| 479 | Ellipses object, and corresponding syntax: |
Guido van Rossum | 061f182 | 1994-10-06 16:03:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 480 | |
Guido van Rossum | ccdfce3 | 1996-07-30 21:34:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 481 | x[lo:hi:stride] == x[slice(lo, hi, stride)] |
| 482 | x[a, ..., z] == x[(a, Ellipses, z)] |
| 483 | |
| 484 | - New documentation for errno and cgi mdoules. |
| 485 | |
| 486 | - The directory containing the script passed to the interpreter is |
| 487 | inserted in from of sys.path; "." is no longer a default path |
| 488 | component. |
| 489 | |
| 490 | - Optional third string argument to string.translate() specifies |
| 491 | characters to delete. New function string.maketrans() creates a |
| 492 | translation table for translate() or for regex.compile(). |
| 493 | |
| 494 | - Module posix (and hence module os under Unix) now supports putenv(). |
| 495 | Moreover, module os is enhanced so that if putenv() is supported, |
| 496 | assignments to os.environ entries make the appropriate putenv() call. |
| 497 | (XXX the putenv() implementation can leak a small amount of memory per |
| 498 | call.) |
| 499 | |
| 500 | - pdb.py can now be invoked from the command line to debug a script: |
| 501 | python pdb.py <script> <arg> ... |
| 502 | |
| 503 | - Much improved parseaddr() in rfc822. |
| 504 | |
| 505 | - In cgi.py, you can now pass an alternative value for environ to |
| 506 | nearly all functions. |
| 507 | |
| 508 | - You can now assign to instance variables whose name begins and ends |
| 509 | with '__'. |
| 510 | |
| 511 | - New version of Fred Drake's parser module and associates (token, |
| 512 | symbol, AST). |
| 513 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 514 | - New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number (again!). |
Guido van Rossum | ccdfce3 | 1996-07-30 21:34:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 515 | |
| 516 | - The "complex" internal structure type is now called "Py_complex" to |
| 517 | avoid name conflicts. |
| 518 | |
| 519 | - Numerous small bugs fixed. |
| 520 | |
| 521 | - Slight pickle speedups. |
| 522 | |
| 523 | - Some slight speedups suggested by Sjoerd (more coming in 1.4 final). |
| 524 | |
| 525 | - NeXT portability mods by Bill Bumgarner integrated. |
| 526 | |
| 527 | - Modules regexmodule.c, bsddbmodule.c and xxmodule.c have been |
| 528 | converted to new naming style. |
| 529 | |
| 530 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 531 | What's new in 1.4beta1 (since 1.3)? |
| 532 | ----------------------------------- |
Guido van Rossum | ccdfce3 | 1996-07-30 21:34:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 533 | |
| 534 | - Added sys.platform and sys.exec_platform for Bill Janssen. |
| 535 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4a67a16 | 1996-08-26 02:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 536 | - Installation has been completely overhauled. "make install" now installs |
| 537 | everything, not just the python binary. Installation uses the install-sh |
| 538 | script (borrowed from X11) to install each file. |
| 539 | |
| 540 | - New functions in the posix module: mkfifo, plock, remove (== unlink), |
| 541 | and ftruncate. More functions are also available under NT. |
| 542 | |
| 543 | - New function in the fcntl module: flock. |
| 544 | |
| 545 | - Shared library support for FreeBSD. |
| 546 | |
| 547 | - The --with-readline option can now be used without a DIRECTORY argument, |
| 548 | for systems where libreadline.* is in one of the standard places. It is |
| 549 | also possible for it to be a shared library. |
| 550 | |
| 551 | - The extension tkinter has been renamed to _tkinter, to avoid confusion |
| 552 | with Tkinter.py oncase insensitive file systems. It now supports Tk 4.1 as |
| 553 | well as 4.0. |
| 554 | |
| 555 | - Author's change of address from CWI in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to |
| 556 | CNRI in Reston, VA, USA. |
| 557 | |
| 558 | - The math.hypot() function is now always available (if it isn't found in |
| 559 | the C math library, Python provides its own implementation). |
| 560 | |
| 561 | - The latex documentation is now compatible with latex2e, thanks to David |
| 562 | Ascher. |
| 563 | |
| 564 | - The expression x**y is now equivalent to pow(x, y). |
| 565 | |
| 566 | - The indexing expression x[a, b, c] is now equivalent to x[(a, b, c)]. |
| 567 | |
| 568 | - Complex numbers are now supported. Imaginary constants are written with |
| 569 | a 'j' or 'J' prefix, general complex numbers can be formed by adding a real |
| 570 | part to an imaginary part, like 3+4j. Complex numbers are always stored in |
| 571 | floating point form, so this is equivalent to 3.0+4.0j. It is also |
| 572 | possible to create complex numbers with the new built-in function |
| 573 | complex(re, [im]). For the footprint-conscious, complex number support can |
| 574 | be disabled by defining the symbol WITHOUT_COMPLEX. |
| 575 | |
| 576 | - New built-in function list() is the long-awaited counterpart of tuple(). |
| 577 | |
| 578 | - There's a new "cmath" module which provides the same functions as the |
| 579 | "math" library but with complex arguments and results. (There are very |
| 580 | good reasons why math.sqrt(-1) still raises an exception -- you have to use |
| 581 | cmath.sqrt(-1) to get 1j for an answer.) |
| 582 | |
| 583 | - The Python.h header file (which is really the same as allobjects.h except |
| 584 | it disables support for old style names) now includes several more files, |
| 585 | so you have to have fewer #include statements in the average extension. |
| 586 | |
| 587 | - The NDEBUG symbol is no longer used. Code that used to be dependent on |
| 588 | the presence of NDEBUG is now present on the absence of DEBUG. TRACE_REFS |
| 589 | and REF_DEBUG have been renamed to Py_TRACE_REFS and Py_REF_DEBUG, |
| 590 | respectively. At long last, the source actually compiles and links without |
| 591 | errors when this symbol is defined. |
| 592 | |
| 593 | - Several symbols that didn't follow the new naming scheme have been |
| 594 | renamed (usually by adding to rename2.h) to use a Py or _Py prefix. There |
| 595 | are no external symbols left without a Py or _Py prefix, not even those |
| 596 | defined by sources that were incorporated from elsewhere (regexpr.c, |
| 597 | md5c.c). (Macros are a different story...) |
| 598 | |
| 599 | - There are now typedefs for the structures defined in config.c and |
| 600 | frozen.c. |
| 601 | |
| 602 | - New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number. |
| 603 | |
| 604 | - New module Bastion. (XXX) |
| 605 | |
| 606 | - Improved performance of StringIO module. |
| 607 | |
| 608 | - UserList module now supports + and * operators. |
| 609 | |
| 610 | - The binhex and binascii modules now actually work. |
| 611 | |
| 612 | - The cgi module has been almost totally rewritten and documented. |
| 613 | It now supports file upload and a new data type to handle forms more |
| 614 | flexibly. |
| 615 | |
| 616 | - The formatter module (for use with htmllib) has been overhauled (again). |
| 617 | |
| 618 | - The ftplib module now supports passive mode and has doc strings. |
| 619 | |
| 620 | - In (ideally) all places where binary files are read or written, the file |
| 621 | is now correctly opened in binary mode ('rb' or 'wb') so the code will work |
| 622 | on Mac or PC. |
| 623 | |
| 624 | - Dummy versions of os.path.expandvars() and expanduser() are now provided |
| 625 | on non-Unix platforms. |
| 626 | |
| 627 | - Module urllib now has two new functions url2pathname and pathname2url |
| 628 | which turn local filenames into "file:..." URLs using the same rules as |
| 629 | Netscape (why be different). it also supports urlretrieve() with a |
| 630 | pathname parameter, and honors the proxy environment variables (http_proxy |
| 631 | etc.). The URL parsing has been improved somewhat, too. |
| 632 | |
| 633 | - Micro improvements to urlparse. Added urlparse.urldefrag() which |
| 634 | removes a trailing ``#fragment'' if any. |
| 635 | |
| 636 | - The mailbox module now supports MH style message delimiters as well. |
| 637 | |
| 638 | - The mhlib module contains some new functionality: setcontext() to set the |
| 639 | current folder and parsesequence() to parse a sequence as commonly passed |
| 640 | to MH commands (e.g. 1-10 or last:5). |
| 641 | |
| 642 | - New module mimify for conversion to and from MIME format of email |
| 643 | messages. |
| 644 | |
| 645 | - Module ni now automatically installs itself when first imported -- this |
| 646 | is against the normal rule that modules should define classes and functions |
| 647 | but not invoke them, but appears more useful in the case that two |
| 648 | different, independent modules want to use ni's features. |
| 649 | |
| 650 | - Some small performance enhancements in module pickle. |
| 651 | |
| 652 | - Small interface change to the profile.run*() family of functions -- more |
| 653 | sensible handling of return values. |
| 654 | |
| 655 | - The officially registered Mac creator for Python files is 'Pyth'. This |
| 656 | replaces 'PYTH' which was used before but never registered. |
| 657 | |
| 658 | - Added regsub.capwords(). (XXX) |
| 659 | |
| 660 | - Added string.capwords(), string.capitalize() and string.translate(). |
| 661 | (XXX) |
| 662 | |
| 663 | - Fixed an interface bug in the rexec module: it was impossible to pass a |
| 664 | hooks instance to the RExec class. rexec now also supports the dynamic |
| 665 | loading of modules from shared libraries. Some other interfaces have been |
| 666 | added too. |
| 667 | |
| 668 | - Module rfc822 now caches the headers in a dictionary for more efficient |
| 669 | lookup. |
| 670 | |
| 671 | - The sgmllib module now understands a limited number of SGML "shorthands" |
| 672 | like <A/.../ for <A>...</A>. (It's not clear that this was a good idea...) |
| 673 | |
| 674 | - The tempfile module actually tries a number of different places to find a |
| 675 | usable temporary directory. (This was prompted by certain Linux |
| 676 | installations that appear to be missing a /usr/tmp directory.) [A bug in |
| 677 | the implementation that would ignore a pre-existing tmpdir global has been |
| 678 | fixed in beta3.] |
| 679 | |
| 680 | - Much improved and enhanved FileDialog module for Tkinter. |
| 681 | |
| 682 | - Many small changes to Tkinter, to bring it more in line with Tk 4.0 (as |
| 683 | well as Tk 4.1). |
| 684 | |
| 685 | - New socket interfaces include ntohs(), ntohl(), htons(), htonl(), and |
| 686 | s.dup(). Sockets now work correctly on Windows. On Windows, the built-in |
| 687 | extension is called _socket and a wrapper module win/socket.py provides |
| 688 | "makefile()" and "dup()" functionality. On Windows, the select module |
| 689 | works only with socket objects. |
| 690 | |
| 691 | - Bugs in bsddb module fixed (e.g. missing default argument values). |
| 692 | |
| 693 | - The curses extension now includes <ncurses.h> when available. |
| 694 | |
| 695 | - The gdbm module now supports opening databases in "fast" mode by |
| 696 | specifying 'f' as the second character or the mode string. |
| 697 | |
| 698 | - new variables sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix pass corresponding |
| 699 | configuration options / Makefile variables to the Python programmer. |
| 700 | |
| 701 | - The ``new'' module now supports creating new user-defined classes as well |
| 702 | as instances thereof. |
| 703 | |
| 704 | - The soundex module now sports get_soundex() to get the soundex value for an |
| 705 | arbitrary string (formerly it would only do soundex-based string |
| 706 | comparison) as well as doc strings. |
| 707 | |
| 708 | - New object type "cobject" to safely wrap void pointers for passing them |
| 709 | between various extension modules. |
| 710 | |
| 711 | - More efficient computation of float**smallint. |
| 712 | |
| 713 | - The mysterious bug whereby "x.x" (two occurrences of the same |
| 714 | one-character name) typed from the commandline would sometimes fail |
| 715 | mysteriously. |
| 716 | |
| 717 | - The initialization of the readline function can now be invoked by a C |
| 718 | extension through PyOS_ReadlineInit(). |
| 719 | |
| 720 | - There's now an externally visible pointer PyImport_FrozenModules which |
| 721 | can be changed by an embedding application. |
| 722 | |
| 723 | - The argument parsing functions now support a new format character 'D' to |
| 724 | specify complex numbers. |
| 725 | |
| 726 | - Various memory leaks plugged and bugs fixed. |
| 727 | |
| 728 | - Improved support for posix threads (now that real implementations are |
| 729 | beginning to apepar). Still no fully functioning semaphores. |
| 730 | |
| 731 | - Some various and sundry improvements and new entries in the Tools |
| 732 | directory. |