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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Barry Warsaw97f005d2008-12-03 16:46:14 +00007What's New in Python 3.1 alpha 0
8================================
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +00009
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-200X*
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +000011
12Core and Builtins
13-----------------
14
Antoine Pitrou05608432009-01-09 18:53:14 +000015- Issue #4705: Fix the -u ("unbuffered binary stdout and stderr") command-line
16 flag to work properly. Furthermore, when specifying -u, the text stdout
17 and stderr streams have line-by-line buffering enabled (the default being
18 to buffer arbitrary chunks of data).
19
Raymond Hettinger35631532009-01-09 03:58:09 +000020- The internal table, _PyLong_DigitValue, is now an array of unsigned chars
21 instead of ints (reducing its size from 4 to 8 times thereby reducing
22 Python's overall memory).
23
Antoine Pitroud35cbf62009-01-06 19:02:24 +000024- Issue #1180193: When importing a module from a .pyc (or .pyo) file with
25 an existing .py counterpart, override the co_filename attributes of all
26 code objects if the original filename is obsolete (which can happen if the
27 file has been renamed, moved, or if it is accessed through different paths).
28 Patch by Ziga Seilnacht and Jean-Paul Calderone.
29
Antoine Pitrouc3b39242009-01-03 16:59:18 +000030- Issue #4580: Fix slicing of memoryviews when the item size is greater than
31 one byte. Also fixes the meaning of len() so that it returns the number of
32 items, rather than the size in bytes.
33
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +000034- Issue #4075: Use OutputDebugStringW in Py_FatalError.
35
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc374e2202009-01-01 23:05:36 +000036- Issue #4747: When the terminal does not use utf-8, executing a script with
37 non-ascii characters in its name could fail with a "SyntaxError: None" error.
38
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000039- Issue #4797: IOError.filename was not set when _fileio.FileIO failed to open
Hirokazu Yamamoto8ed9a802009-01-01 16:09:52 +000040 file with `bytes' filename on Windows.
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000041
Antoine Pitrou7ddda782009-01-01 15:35:33 +000042- Issue #3680: Reference cycles created through a dict, set or deque iterator
43 did not get collected.
44
Nick Coghlanf1f2f682008-12-30 07:29:12 +000045- Issue #4701: PyObject_Hash now implicitly calls PyType_Ready on types
46 where the tp_hash and tp_dict slots are both NULL.
47
Georg Brandlccc47b62008-12-28 11:44:14 +000048- Issue #4759: None is now allowed as the first argument of
49 bytearray.translate(). It was always allowed for bytes.translate().
50
Skip Montanaro80072cb2008-12-23 03:51:14 +000051- Added test case to ensure attempts to read from a file opened for writing
52 fail.
53
Antoine Pitrou51f3ef92008-12-20 13:14:23 +000054- Issue #3106: Speedup some comparisons (str/str and int/int).
55
Antoine Pitrouf289ae62008-12-18 11:06:25 +000056- Issue #2183: Simplify and optimize bytecode for list, dict and set
57 comprehensions. Original patch for list comprehensions by Neal Norwitz.
58
Antoine Pitrou621601a2008-12-17 23:18:19 +000059- Issue #2467: gc.DEBUG_STATS reported invalid elapsed times. Also, always
60 print elapsed times, not only when some objects are uncollectable /
61 unreachable. Original patch by Neil Schemenauer.
62
Mark Dickinson54bc1ec2008-12-17 16:19:07 +000063- Issue #3439: Add a bit_length method to int.
64
Mark Dickinsonda2706b2008-12-11 18:03:03 +000065- Issue #2173: When getting device encoding, check that return value of
66 nl_langinfo is not the empty string. This was causing silent build
67 failures on OS X.
68
Jeffrey Yasskinb9083f32008-12-11 06:18:33 +000069- Issue #4597: Fixed several opcodes that weren't always propagating
70 exceptions.
71
72- Issue #4589: Fixed exception handling when the __exit__ function of a
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc10b24e82008-12-10 23:49:33 +000073 context manager returns a value that cannot be converted to a bool.
74
Mark Dickinsonfd24b322008-12-06 15:33:31 +000075- Issue #4445: Replace "sizeof(PyBytesObject)" with
76 "offsetof(PyBytesObject, ob_sval) + 1" when allocating memory for
77 bytes instances. On a typical machine this saves 3 bytes of memory
78 (on average) per allocation of a bytes instance.
79
Christian Heimesa872de52008-12-05 08:26:55 +000080- Issue #4533: File read operation was dreadfully slow due to a slowly
81 growing read buffer. Fixed by using the same growth rate algorithm as
82 Python 2.x.
83
Antoine Pitrou5504e892008-12-06 21:27:53 +000084- Issue #4509: Various issues surrounding resize of bytearray objects to
85 which there are buffer exports (e.g. memoryview instances).
86
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +000087- Issue #4233: Changed semantic of ``_fileio.FileIO``'s ``close()``
88 method on file objects with closefd=False. The file descriptor is still
89 kept open but the file object behaves like a closed file. The ``FileIO``
90 object also got a new readonly attribute ``closefd``.
Matthias Klose7e1b8fa2008-11-26 17:22:04 +000091
Antoine Pitroubc420402008-12-07 20:14:49 +000092- Issue #4569: Interpreter crash when mutating a memoryview with an item size
93 larger than 1.
94
Benjamin Peterson371ccfb2008-12-27 19:03:36 +000095- Issue #4748: Lambda generators no longer return a value.
96
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +000097Library
98-------
99
Thomas Heller5e4e4272009-01-08 09:34:20 +0000100- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
101 function without defining argtypes.
102
Antoine Pitrou42db3ef2009-01-04 21:37:59 +0000103- Issue #4272: Add an optional argument to the GzipFile constructor to override
104 the timestamp in the gzip stream. The default value remains the current time.
105 The information can be used by e.g. gunzip when decompressing. Patch by
106 Jacques Frechet.
107
Mark Dickinson315a20a2009-01-04 21:34:18 +0000108- Restore Python 2.3 compatibility for decimal.py.
109
Guilherme Polo3f5f8222009-01-03 22:00:39 +0000110- Issue #3638: Remove functions from _tkinter module level that depend on
111 TkappObject to work with multiple threads.
112
Antoine Pitrou38a66ad2009-01-03 18:41:49 +0000113- Issue #4718: Adapt the wsgiref package so that it actually works with
114 Python 3.x, in accordance with the `official amendments of the spec
115 <http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Amendments_1.0>`_.
116
Raymond Hettinger771ed762009-01-03 19:20:32 +0000117- Issue #4796: Added Decimal.from_float() and Context.create_decimal_from_float()
118 to the decimal module.
119
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000120- Fractions.from_float() no longer loses precision for integers too big to
121 cast as floats.
122
Mark Dickinsonf9236412009-01-02 23:23:21 +0000123- Issue #4812: add missing underscore prefix to some internal-use-only
124 constants in the decimal module. (Dec_0 becomes _Dec_0, etc.)
125
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000126- Issue 4790: The nsmallest() and nlargest() functions in the heapq module
127 did unnecessary work in the common case where no key function was specified.
128
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000129- Issue #4795: inspect.isgeneratorfunction() returns False instead of None when
130 the function is not a generator.
131
Tarek Ziadé9df8ce32008-12-30 23:09:20 +0000132- Issue #4702: Throwing a DistutilsPlatformError instead of IOError in case
133 no MSVC compiler is found under Windows. Original patch by Philip Jenvey.
134
Tarek Ziadé4450dcf2008-12-29 22:38:38 +0000135- Issue #4646: distutils was choking on empty options arg in the setup
136 function. Original patch by Thomas Heller.
137
Martin v. Löwis1f1620e2008-12-29 16:27:13 +0000138- Issue #3767: Convert Tk object to string in tkColorChooser.
139
Martin v. Löwise354d782008-12-29 16:03:04 +0000140- Issue #3248: Allow placing ScrolledText in a PanedWindow.
141
Antoine Pitrou5acd41e2008-12-28 14:29:00 +0000142- Issue #4444: Allow assertRaises() to be used as a context handler, so that
143 the code under test can be written inline if more practical.
144
Georg Brandldb7b6b92009-01-01 15:53:14 +0000145- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
146 works as expected in the interactive environment.
147
Antoine Pitroudb5fe662008-12-27 15:50:40 +0000148- Issue #4756: zipfile.is_zipfile() now supports file-like objects. Patch by
149 Gabriel Genellina.
150
Antoine Pitrou180a3362008-12-14 16:36:46 +0000151- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if \r on 64-char
152 boundary.
153
Nick Coghlanf088e5e2008-12-14 11:50:48 +0000154- Issue #4223: inspect.getsource() will now correctly display source code
155 for packages loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302
156 loader). Original patch by Alexander Belopolsky.
157
158- Issue #4201: pdb can now access and display source code loaded via
159 zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader). Original patch by
160 Alexander Belopolsky.
161
162- Issue #4197: doctests in modules loaded via zipimport (or any other PEP
163 302 conformant loader) will now work correctly in most cases (they
164 are still subject to the constraints that exist for all code running
165 from inside a module loaded via a PEP 302 loader and attempting to
166 perform IO operations based on __file__). Original patch by
167 Alexander Belopolsky.
168
169- Issues #4082 and #4512: Add runpy support to zipimport in a manner that
170 allows backporting to maintenance branches. Original patch by
171 Alexander Belopolsky.
172
Antoine Pitrou7c59bc62008-12-13 23:20:54 +0000173- Issue #4163: textwrap module: allow word splitting on a hyphen preceded by
174 a non-ASCII letter.
175
Lars Gustäbel43fcf3a2008-12-12 14:58:38 +0000176- Issue #4616: TarFile.utime(): Restore directory times on Windows.
177
Benjamin Peterson433f32c2008-12-12 01:25:05 +0000178- Issue #4021: tokenize.detect_encoding() now raises a SyntaxError when the
179 codec cannot be found. This is for compatibility with the builtin behavior.
180
Facundo Batista708d5812008-12-11 04:20:07 +0000181- Issue #4084: Fix max, min, max_mag and min_mag Decimal methods to
182 give correct results in the case where one argument is a quiet NaN
183 and the other is a finite number that requires rounding.
184
Skip Montanaroc1ce2862008-12-06 17:25:02 +0000185- Issue #4483: _dbm module now builds on systems with gdbm & gdbm_compat
186 libs.
187
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000188- Added the subprocess.check_call_output() convenience function to get output
189 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
190
191- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
192 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
193 Content-Disposition headers.
194
195- Issue #4384: Added logging integration with warnings module using
196 captureWarnings(). This change includes a NullHandler which does nothing;
197 it will be of use to library developers who want to avoid the "No handlers
198 could be found for logger XXX" message which can appear if the library user
199 doesn't configure logging.
200
201- Issue #3741: DISTUTILS_USE_SDK set causes msvc9compiler.py to raise an
202 exception.
203
Georg Brandleee31162008-12-07 15:15:22 +0000204- Issue #4529: fix the parser module's validation of try-except-finally
205 statements.
206
207- Issue #4458: getopt.gnu_getopt() now recognizes a single "-" as an argument,
208 not a malformed option.
209
210- Added the subprocess.check_output() convenience function to get output
211 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
212
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc9d4742008-12-05 01:40:43 +0000213- Issue #4542: On Windows, binascii.crc32 still accepted str as binary input;
214 the corresponding tests now pass.
215
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc2ce572008-12-05 01:02:21 +0000216- Issue #4537: webbrowser.UnixBrowser would fail to open the browser because
217 it was calling the wrong open() function.
218
Fred Drake9a0a65b2008-12-04 19:24:50 +0000219- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
220 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
221 Content-Disposition headers.
222
Antoine Pitrou2a013ea2008-12-27 20:39:28 +0000223Tools/Demos
224-----------
225
226- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.
227
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000228
229Build
230-----
231
232- Issue #4472: "configure --enable-shared" now works on OSX
233
234- Issues #4728 and #4060: WORDS_BIGEDIAN is now correct in Universal builds.
235
236- Issue #4389: Add icon to the uninstall entry in "add-and-remove-programs".
237
238- Issue #4289: Remove Cancel button from AdvancedDlg.
239
240- Issue #1656675: Register a drop handler for .py* files on Windows.
241
242- Issue #4120: Exclude manifest from extension modules in VS2008.
243
244- Issue #4091: Install pythonxy.dll in system32 again.
245
246- Issue #4018: Disable "for me" installations on Vista.
247
248- Issue #3758: Add ``patchcheck`` build target to .PHONY.
249
250- Issue #4204: Fixed module build errors on FreeBSD 4.
251
252
253C-API
254-----
255
256- Issue #4720: The format for PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords can begin with '|'.
257
258- Issue #3632: from the gdb debugger, the 'pyo' macro can now be called when
259 the GIL is released, or owned by another thread.
260
261- Issue #4122: On Windows, fix a compilation error when using the
262 Py_UNICODE_ISSPACE macro in an extension module.
263
264
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000265Extension Modules
266-----------------
267
Antoine Pitroubcd5cbe2009-01-08 21:17:16 +0000268- Issue #4751: hashlib now releases the GIL when hashing large buffers
269 (with a hardwired threshold of 2048 bytes), allowing better parallelization
270 on multi-CPU systems. Contributed by Lukas Lueg (ebfe) and Victor Stinner.
271
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +0000272- Issue #4051: Prevent conflict of UNICODE macros in cPickle.
273
Antoine Pitrou31f30b12009-01-02 17:34:35 +0000274- Issue #4738: Each zlib object now has a separate lock, allowing to compress
275 or decompress several streams at once on multi-CPU systems. Also, the GIL
276 is now released when computing the CRC of a large buffer. Patch by ebfe.
277
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000278- Issue #4228: Pack negative values the same way as 2.4 in struct's L format.
279
Martin v. Löwis05bfe1f2008-12-29 18:21:47 +0000280- Issue #1040026: Fix os.times result on systems where HZ is incorrect.
281
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000282- Issues #3167, #3682: Fix test_math failures for log, log10 on Solaris,
283 OpenBSD.
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcefae8c42008-11-21 23:08:09 +0000284
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +0000285- Issue #4583: array.array would not always prohibit resizing when a buffer
286 has been exported, resulting in an interpreter crash when accessing the
287 buffer.
288
Martin v. Löwis841edad2008-11-30 10:36:49 +0000289
Brett Cannon7317c1e2008-11-25 19:19:17 +0000290Docs
291----
292
Georg Brandl52b92cc2008-05-25 09:43:03 +0000293
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000294**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**