blob: 9d91ae4eed1159378221915efccdfde2a36598d7 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
8================================
9
10*Release date: XX-XXX-XXXX*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
15...
16
17Extension Modules
18-----------------
19
20...
21
22Library
23-------
24
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +000025- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
26 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
27
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +000028- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
29
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +000030- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
31 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000032
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +000033- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
34
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +000035- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
36
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +000037Build
38-----
39
40...
41
42C API
43-----
44
45...
46
47Documentation
48-------------
49
50...
51
52Tests
53-----
54
55...
56
57Windows
58-------
59
60...
61
62Mac
63---
64
65...
66
67New platforms
68-------------
69
70...
71
72Tools/Demos
73-----------
74
75...
76
77
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +000078What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
79================================
80
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +000081*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +000082
83Core and builtins
84-----------------
85
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +000086- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
87 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
88
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +000089- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
90 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
91 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
92 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
93
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +000094- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
95 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
96
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +000097- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
98 constant.
99
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000100- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
101 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
102 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
103 large), and to anomalies such as
104 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
105 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
106 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
107 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000108
109Extension modules
110-----------------
111
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000112- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
113 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000114 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
115 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
116 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000117
118Library
119-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000120
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000121- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
122 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
123 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
124 --swig-cpp.
125
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000126- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
127 it is set.
128
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000129- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000130
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000131- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
132 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
133 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
134 Closes bug #1039270.
135
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000136- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000137
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000138 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000139 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
140 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
141 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
142 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
143 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
144 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
145 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
146 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
147 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
148 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
149 + Updates to documentation.
150
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000151- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
152 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
153 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
154 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
155
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000156- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000157
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000158- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
159 applications should use the getmember function.
160
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000161- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
162
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000163- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
164 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
165 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
166 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
167 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
168 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
169 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
170 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
171 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
172
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000173- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
174 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000175 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000176
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000177- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
178 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
179 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
180 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
181 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
182 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
183 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
184 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000185
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000186- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
187 the new public features (of which there are many).
188
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000189- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000190 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
191 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
192 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
193 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000194 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000195
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000196- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
197
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000198- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
199 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
200 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
201 options.
202
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000203- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
204 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
205 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
206 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
207 conditions under which non-string values work.
208
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000209Build
210-----
211
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000212- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
213 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
214 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
215
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000216- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
217 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
218 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
219 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
220 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000221
222C API
223-----
224
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000225- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
226 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
227
228- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
229
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000230- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
231 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
232 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
233 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
234 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
235 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
236 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
237 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
238 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
239
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000240- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
241
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000242- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
243 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
244 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000245
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000246Tests
247-----
248
249- test__locale ported to unittest
250
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000251Mac
252---
253
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000254- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
255 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
256 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000257
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000258Tools/Demos
259-----------
260
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000261- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
262 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
263 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
264 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
265 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000266
267
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000268What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
269=================================
270
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000271*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000272
273Core and builtins
274-----------------
275
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000276- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000277 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
278
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000279- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
280 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
281 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
282 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
283 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
284 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
285 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
286 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000287 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
288 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
289 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
290 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
291 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000292
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000293- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
294 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
295 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
296 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
297 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
298
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000299- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
300
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000301- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
302 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
303
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000304- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
305 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
306 modified the list.
307
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000308- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
309 functions is now writable.
310
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000311- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
312 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
313 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
314 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
315
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000316- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
317 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
318 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
319 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
320 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000321
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000322- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
323 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
324
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000325Extension modules
326-----------------
327
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000328- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
329
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000330- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
331 data.
332
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000333- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
334 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
335 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
336 supposed to have been truncated away.
337
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000338- Added socket.socketpair().
339
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000340- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
341 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
342
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000343- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000344 versions of Python, have now been removed.
345
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000346Library
347-------
348
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000349- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000350 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000351
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000352- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
353 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
354
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000355- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
356 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
357
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000358- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
359
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000360- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
361 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000362
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000363- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
364 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
365
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000366- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
367
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000368- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
369
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000370- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
371
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000372- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
373 Percivall.
374
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000375- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
376 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
377
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000378- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
379 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
380 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000381 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000382
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000383- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
384 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
385 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
386 and exponent.
387
388- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
389
390- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
391 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
392 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
393
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000394- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
395 to the readline module.
396
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000397- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000398 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
399 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000400
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000401- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
402 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
403 contains symlinks.
404
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000405- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
406 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
407
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000408- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
409 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
410 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
411
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000412- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
413 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
414 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
415 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
416 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
417 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
418 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
419 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
420 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
421 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
422 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
423 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
424 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
425
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000426- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
427
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000428Tools/Demos
429-----------
430
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000431- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
432 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
433
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000434- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
435
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000436Build
437-----
438
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000439- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
440 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
441 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
442 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
443 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
444 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
445 plans to do so.
446
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000447- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
448 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
449
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000450- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
451 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
452
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000453- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
454 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
455
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000456- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
457 GNU/k*BSD systems.
458
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000459- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
460 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
461
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000462C API
463-----
464
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000465..
466
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000467Documentation
468-------------
469
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000470- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
471 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
472
473- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
474 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
475 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000476
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000477New platforms
478-------------
479
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000480- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
481
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000482Tests
483-----
484
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000485..
486
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000487Windows
488-------
489
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000490- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
491 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
492 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
493 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
494 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
495 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
496 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
497 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
498 the problem.
499
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000500Mac
501---
502
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000503..
504
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000505
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000506What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
507=================================
508
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000509*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000510
511Core and builtins
512-----------------
513
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000514- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
515 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
516 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
517 sensitive code.
518
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000519- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000520 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000521
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000522 @staticmethod
523 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000524
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000525 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000526
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000527- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
528 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
529 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
530 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
531 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
532 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
533 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
534 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
535 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
536 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
537 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
538
539 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
540 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
541 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
542 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
543 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
544 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
545 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
546
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000547- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
548 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
549
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000550- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000551 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000552
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000553- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000554 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000555 which was missing for no apparent reason.
556
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000557- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000558 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
559 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
560
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000561- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
562 types that support garbage collection.
563
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000564- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
565
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000566- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
567 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
568 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
569 Jython.
570
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000571- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
572
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000573- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
574 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
575
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000576- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
577 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
578 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000579
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000580- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
581 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
582 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
583
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000584Extension modules
585-----------------
586
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000587- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
588
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000589Library
590-------
591
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000592- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
593 TIS-620
594
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000595- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
596 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
597 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
598 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
599 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
600 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
601 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
602 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
603 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
604 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
605
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000606- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
607
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000608- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
609 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
610 same as when the argument is omitted).
611 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
612
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000613- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
614
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000615- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
616 schemes are offered.
617
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000618- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
619
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000620- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
621 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
622 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
623
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000624- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
625
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000626- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
627 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
628
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000629- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
630 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
631 when dummy_threading is being used.
632
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000633- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
634 from a tarfile.
635
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000636- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000637 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000638
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000639- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
640 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
641 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
642 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
643
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000644- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
645 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
646
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000647- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
648 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
649 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
650 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
651 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
652 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
653 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
654 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
655 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
656 by some other method in progress).
657
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000658- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
659 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
660 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000661
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000662- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
663
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000664- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
665 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
666 AM Kuchling.
667
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000668- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
669 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
670 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
671
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000672- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
673 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
674 instead of unsigned.
675
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000676- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000677 no longer part of the public API.
678
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000679- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
680 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
681 string methods of the same name).
682
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000683- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000684 SF patch 945642.
685
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000686- doctest unittest integration improvements:
687
688 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
689
690 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
691 DocTestSuites.
692
693- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
694 that provide thread-local data.
695
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000696- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
697 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
698
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000699- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
700
701- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
702 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
703 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
704
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000705- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
706
707 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
708 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
709 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000710
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000711 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
712 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
713 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
714 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
715
716 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
717 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
718
719 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
720 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
721 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
722 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
723
724 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
725 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
726 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
727 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
728 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
729
730 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
731 wrapping help output.
732
733 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
734 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
735 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000736
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000737C API
738-----
739
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000740- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
741 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
742 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
743 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
744 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
745 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
746 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
747 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
748 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
749 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
750 its visible semantics have not changed.
751
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000752- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
753 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
754
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000755Documentation
756-------------
757
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000758- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000759
760 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000761 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000762
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000763 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000764
765 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
766
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000767- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000768
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000769Tests
770-----
771
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000772- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000773 platforms that use the Makefile.
774
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000775- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
776 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
777 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
778
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000779
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000780What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
781=================================
782
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000783*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000784
785Core and builtins
786-----------------
787
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000788- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
789 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
790 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
791 objects now (one object instead of three).
792
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000793- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
794 Windows DLLs.
795
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000796- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
797 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000798
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000799- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
800 a new .pyc magic.
801
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000802- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
803 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
804 be there.
805
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000806- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
807 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
808 the LC_NUMERIC category.
809
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000810- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
811 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
812 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
813
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000814- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
815
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000816- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
817 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
818 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000819
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000820- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
821 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
822
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000823- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
824
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000825- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000826 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000827
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000828- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
829
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000830- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
831
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000832- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
833 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
834
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000835- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
836 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
837 Fixes bug #858016 .
838
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000839- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
840 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
841 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
842
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000843- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
844 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
845 improves their performance (about 35%).
846
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000847- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
848 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
849 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
850
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000851- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
852 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
853 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
854 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
855
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000856- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
857 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
858 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
859 length is not known).
860
861- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
862 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000863 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
864 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000865 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
866
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000867- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
868 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
869
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000870- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
871 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
872 keyword arguments.
873
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000874- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
875 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
876 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
877
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +0000878- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
879 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
880 cases.
881
882- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
883 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
884 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
885 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
886 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
887 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
888 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
889 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
890 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
891 a release build.
892
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000893- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
894 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
895
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000896- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000897 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000898
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000899- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
900 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
901 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
902 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
903 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
904 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
905 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
906 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
907 destroyed.
908
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000909- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
910 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
911 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
912 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
913 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
914 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
915 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
916 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
917
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000918- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
919 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
920 character other than a space.
921
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000922- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
923 by the function object or by the method object, the function
924 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
925 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
926 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
927 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
928 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
929 attributes with the same name.
930
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000931- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
932 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
933 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
934 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
935 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
936 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
937 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
938 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
939 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
940 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
941 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
942 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
943 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
944 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000945
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000946- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
947 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
948 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
949 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
950 This has been repaired.
951
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000952- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
953
954- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
955
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000956- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
957 over a sequence.
958
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000959- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000960 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000961
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000962- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
963
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000964- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
965 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
966 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
967 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
968 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
969 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
970 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
971 records with equal keys is unchanged).
972
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000973- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
974 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
975 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
976
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000977- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
978 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
979 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
980 freelist.
981
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000982- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
983 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
984
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000985- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
986 number.
987
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000988- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
989 a TypeError exception.
990
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000991- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
992 820195.
993
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000994- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
995 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
996 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
997
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000998- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000999 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1000 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001001
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001002- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1003 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1004 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1005
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001006- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1007 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001008 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001009
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001010- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001011 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1012 the first call.
1013
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001014
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001015Extension modules
1016-----------------
1017
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001018- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1019 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1020
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001021- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1022 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1023 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1024 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1025 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1026 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1027 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001028
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001029- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1030
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001031- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1032
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001033- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1034 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1035
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001036- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1037 fewer false positives.
1038
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001039- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1040 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1041
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001042- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001043 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1044
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001045- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001046 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001047 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001048 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1049 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001050
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001051- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1052 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1053 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1054 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1055
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001056- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1057 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1058 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1059 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1060 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1061 #897625.
1062
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001063- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1064 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1065
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001066- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1067 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1068 and pops on either side of the deque.
1069
1070- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1071 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1072
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001073- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1074 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1075 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1076 other functions that expect a function argument.
1077
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001078- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1079
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001080- os.getsid was added.
1081
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001082- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1083 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1084 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1085
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001086- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1087
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001088- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1089
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001090- readline.clear_history was added.
1091
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001092- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1093
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001094- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1095
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001096- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1097
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001098- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1099
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001100- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1101
1102- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1103
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001104- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1105
1106- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1107
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001108- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1109 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1110 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1111
1112- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1113 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1114 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1115 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1116 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1117 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1118 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1119
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001120- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1121 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1122 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1123 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001124
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001125- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001126 iterators from a single iterable.
1127
1128- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1129 of raising a TypeError exception.
1130
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001131- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1132 as parameter.
1133
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001134Library
1135-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001136
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001137- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1138 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1139 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001140
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001141- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1142 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1143 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001144
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001145- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001146
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001147- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1148 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001149
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001150- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1151 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1152
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001153- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1154
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001155- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001156 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001157
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001158- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001159 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001160
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001161- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1162
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001163- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1164 on cygwin and mingw32.
1165
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001166- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1167
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001168- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1169 module.
1170
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001171- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1172 installation scheme for all platforms.
1173
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001174- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001175 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001176
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001177- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1178 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1179 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1180
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001181- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1182 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1183 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1184
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001185- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1186
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001187- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1188
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001189- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1190 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1191
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001192- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1193 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1194 type pattern with the same value exists.
1195
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001196- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1197 when run from the command prompt).
1198
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001199- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1200 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1201
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001202- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1203 default sort).
1204
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001205- Added global runctx function to profile module
1206
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001207- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1208
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001209- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1210
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001211- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1212
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001213- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001214 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1215 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1216 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1217 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1218 accordingly.
1219
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001220- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1221 decoding standards.
1222
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001223- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1224 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1225 called for all requests.
1226
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001227- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1228 they are passed to the compiler.
1229
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001230- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1231 indent, width and depth.
1232
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001233- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1234 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1235
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001236- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1237 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1238
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001239- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1240
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001241- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1242
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001243- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1244
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001245- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1246 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1247
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001248- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001249 for better performance.
1250
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001251- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001252
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001253- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1254 a string).
1255
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001256- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1257
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001258- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1259
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001260- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1261
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001262- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1263
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001264- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1265 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1266 list of fieldnames.
1267
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001268- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1269 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1270
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001271- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1272
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001273- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1274 empty lists.
1275
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001276- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1277 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1278 and shelves.
1279
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001280- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1281 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1282
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001283- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001284 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1285 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001286
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001287- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1288 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001289 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001290
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001291- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001292 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1293 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1294
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001295- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1296 and removed in Py2.4.
1297
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001298- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1299
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001300- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1301
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001302Tools/Demos
1303-----------
1304
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001305- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1306 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1307
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001308- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1309
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001310- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1311 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1312 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1313 destination in situations where both files are given.
1314
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001315- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1316 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1317 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1318 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1319
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001320- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1321
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001322- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1323 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1324 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1325 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1326 now.
1327
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001328- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1329 in effect
1330
1331- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1332 C-c C-h
1333
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001334- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1335 -d option was given.
1336
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001337Build
1338-----
1339
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001340- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1341 build under OS X.
1342
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001343- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1344 --enable-profiling.
1345
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001346- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1347 is configured --with-tsc.
1348
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001349- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1350 on AMD64.
1351
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001352- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1353 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1354
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001355- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1356 removed.
1357
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001358- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1359 supported (see PEP 11).
1360
1361- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1362
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001363- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1364
1365- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1366 (see PEP 11).
1367
1368- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1369 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1370
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001371C API
1372-----
1373
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001374- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1375 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1376 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1377
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001378- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1379 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1380 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1381 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1382
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001383- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1384 generator objects.
1385
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001386- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1387 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001388 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1389 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001390
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001391- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1392 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1393
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001394- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1395 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1396 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1397 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1398 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1399
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001400- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1401 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1402 about 10% faster.
1403
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001404- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1405 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1406
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001407- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1408 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1409 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1410 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1411
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001412Windows
1413-------
1414
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001415- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1416 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1417 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1418 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1419
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001420- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1421 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1422 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1423
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001424
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001425What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1426===============================
1427
1428*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1429
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001430IDLE
1431----
1432
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001433- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1434 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1435 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1436 context-menu actions.
1437
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001438- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1439 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1440 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1441 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1442 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1443 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1444 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1445 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1446 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1447
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001448
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001449What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1450=============================================
1451
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001452*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001453
1454Core and builtins
1455-----------------
1456
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001457- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001458 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001459 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1460
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001461Extension modules
1462-----------------
1463
1464- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1465 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1466 than once. This has been fixed.
1467
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001468- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1469 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1470 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1471 call.
1472
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001473- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1474
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001475Library
1476-------
1477
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001478- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1479 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1480
1481- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1482 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1483 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1484 restored.
1485
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001486IDLE
1487----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001488
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001489- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001490
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001491Build
1492-----
1493
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001494- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1495 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1496
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001497C API
1498-----
1499
1500Windows
1501-------
1502
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001503- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1504 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1505
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001506- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1507
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001508Mac
1509---
1510
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001511- Various fixes to pimp.
1512
1513- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1514
1515- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1516 more problems than it solves.
1517
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001518
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001519What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1520=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001521
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001522*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1523
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001524Core and builtins
1525-----------------
1526
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001527- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1528 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1529
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001530- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1531 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001532 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001533
1534- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1535 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1536 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001537 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001538
1539- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1540 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001541
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001542- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1543 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1544 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1545
1546- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001547 770247.
1548
1549- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001550
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001551Extension modules
1552-----------------
1553
1554- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1555 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1556
1557- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1558
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001559- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1560
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001561- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1562 contained within the _strptime module.
1563
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001564- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1565 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1566
1567- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001568 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1569
1570- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1571 the find_class attribute, if present.
1572
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001573- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001574
1575 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1576 (SF bug 763298).
1577
1578 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001579 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1580 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1581 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001582
1583 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1584
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001585Library
1586-------
1587
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001588- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1589
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001590- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1591 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1592 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1593 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1594 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1595 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1596 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1597 or Tester().
1598
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001599- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1600 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1601 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1602 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1603 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1604 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1605 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1606 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1607 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001608
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001609 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001610
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001611- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1612 weren't before was an oversight.
1613
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001614- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1615 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1616
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001617- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1618 when there are no lines.
1619
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001620- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1621 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1622
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001623- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1624 to child processes.
1625
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001626- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1627
1628- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1629
1630- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1631 xmlrpclib.
1632
1633- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1634 responses.
1635
1636- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1637 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1638
1639- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1640 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1641 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1642
1643- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1644 used as patterns.
1645
1646- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1647 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1648 than Tk 8.3.
1649
1650- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1651
1652- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001653
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001654Tools/Demos
1655-----------
1656
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001657- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1658
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001659- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1660
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001661- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001662
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001663Build
1664-----
1665
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001666- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1667
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001668- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1669
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001670- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1671 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001672
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001673- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1674 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1675 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001676
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001677C API
1678-----
1679
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001680- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1681 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1682
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001683Windows
1684-------
1685
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001686- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1687 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1688 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1689 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1690 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1691 Python exception ::
1692
1693 thread.error: can't start new thread
1694
1695 is raised now.
1696
1697- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1698 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1699 instead of from DLL teardown.
1700
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001701Mac
1702---
1703
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001704- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001705 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001706 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1707 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1708 the executable in the bundle.
1709
1710- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001711
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001712- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1713
1714- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1715 on Panther.
1716
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001717What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1718================================
1719
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001720*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001721
1722Core and builtins
1723-----------------
1724
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001725- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1726 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1727 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1728 with the -i option.
1729
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001730- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1731 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1732
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001733- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1734 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1735
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001736- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1737 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1738 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1739 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1740 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1741 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1742 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1743 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1744 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1745 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1746 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1747 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1748 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001749
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001750- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1751 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1752 embedded in a lambda expression.
1753
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001754- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1755 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1756 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1757 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1758 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1759
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001760- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1761 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1762 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1763
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001764- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1765 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1766
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001767- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1768 It's writable again.
1769
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001770- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1771 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1772 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001773 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001774
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001775- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1776 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1777 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1778
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001779Extension modules
1780-----------------
1781
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001782- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1783 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1784
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001785- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1786 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1787 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1788 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1789
1790- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1791 collection.
1792
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001793- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1794 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1795 unique within a single program run.
1796
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001797- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1798 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1799
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001800- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1801 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1802
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001803- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1804 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001805
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001806- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1807
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001808- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1809 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1810
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001811- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1812 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1813 for many BSD-derived systems.
1814
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001815
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001816Library
1817-------
1818
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001819- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1820 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1821 primary ones:
1822
1823 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1824 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1825 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1826
1827 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1828 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1829 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1830 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1831 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1832 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1833
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001834- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1835 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1836 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1837 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1838 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1839 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1840 argument.
1841
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001842- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1843 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1844 in the archive.
1845
1846- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1847 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1848
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001849- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1850 569574).
1851
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001852- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1853 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1854 no more.
1855
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001856- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1857 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1858 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1859 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1860 code coverage.
1861
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001862- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1863 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1864 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001865 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1866 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001867
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001868- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1869 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1870 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001871 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001872
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001873- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1874
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001875- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1876 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1877 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1878 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1879
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001880- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1881 handling.
1882
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001883- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1884 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1885
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001886- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1887 in socket.py.
1888
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001889- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1890
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001891- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1892 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1893 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1894 opener with proxy support.
1895
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001896- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1897
1898- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1899
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001900Tools/Demos
1901-----------
1902
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001903- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1904
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001905- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1906
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001907- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1908 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001909
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001910- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1911 files.
1912
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001913Build
1914-----
1915
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001916- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001917 different root directory.
1918
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001919C API
1920-----
1921
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001922- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1923 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1924 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1925 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1926 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1927 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1928 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1929 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1930 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1931 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1932
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001933- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1934 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1935 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1936 from Python.
1937
1938
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001939New platforms
1940-------------
1941
1942None this time.
1943
1944Tests
1945-----
1946
1947- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1948 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1949
1950Windows
1951-------
1952
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001953- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1954
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001955- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1956 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1957 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1958 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1959 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1960 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1961 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1962 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1963 that's what it's for.
1964
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001965Mac
1966---
1967
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001968- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1969 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1970 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1971 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001972- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1973 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1974- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001975
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001976SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1977------------------------------------
1978
1979430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1980598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1981622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1982661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1983683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1984697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1985713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1986724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1987727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1988729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1989730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1990731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1991732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1992733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1993735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1994740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1995744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1996745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1997747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1998749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1999751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2000753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2001755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2002757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2003760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2004
2005
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002006What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2007================================
2008
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002009*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002010
2011Core and builtins
2012-----------------
2013
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002014- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2015 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2016
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002017- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2018 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2019 and cannot be strings).
2020
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002021- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2022 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2023 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2024 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2025
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002026- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2027 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2028 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2029 Python itself.
2030
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002031- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2032 the referenced object, if it has one.
2033
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002034- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2035 the thread started at
2036 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2037
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002038- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2039 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2040 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2041 placed on a list index.
2042
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002043- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2044 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2045 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2046 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2047
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002048- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2049 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2050 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2051 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2052 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2053 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2054 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2055
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002056- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2057 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2058 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2059 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2060 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2061
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002062- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2063 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002064
2065- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2066 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2067 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2068 #693195.)
2069
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002070- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2071 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002072
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002073- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002074 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002075 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2076 interpreter executions, would fail.
2077
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002078- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002079 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002080 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002081
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002082Extension modules
2083-----------------
2084
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002085- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2086 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2087 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2088 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2089
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002090- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2091 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2092
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002093- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2094 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2095 and Greg Chapman.)
2096
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002097- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2098 recursively.
2099
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002100- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002101 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2102 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2103 leaks.
2104
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002105- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2106
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002107- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2108 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2109 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2110 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2111 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2112 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2113 #705836.
2114
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002115- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002116 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2117
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002118- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2119 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2120 See SF bug #692416.
2121
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002122- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2123 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2124
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002125- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2126 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2127 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002128
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002129- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002130 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2131 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2132
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002133- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2134 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2135 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2136 timeouts to work properly.
2137
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002138Library
2139-------
2140
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002141- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2142 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2143 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2144 future release.
2145
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002146- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2147 for querying platform dependent features.
2148
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002149- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002150
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002151- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2152 pickle protocol versions.
2153
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002154- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2155 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2156 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2157
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002158- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2159
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002160- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2161 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2162 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2163 modules.
2164
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002165- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2166 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2167 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2168
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002169- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2170 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2171
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002172- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2173 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2174 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2175
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002176- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002177 MS Office extensions.
2178
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002179- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2180 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2181
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002182- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2183 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2184
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002185- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2186 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2187 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2188 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2189 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2190 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2191
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002192- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2193 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2194 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002195
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002196- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2197 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2198 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2199
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002200- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2201
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002202- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2203 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2204 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2205
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002206Tools/Demos
2207-----------
2208
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002209- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2210 See the module docstring for details.
2211
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002212Build
2213-----
2214
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002215- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2216 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002217
2218C API
2219-----
2220
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002221- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2222
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002223- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2224 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2225 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2226
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002227- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2228 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002229
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002230 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2231 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2232 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002233
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002234- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002235 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2236
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002237- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2238 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2239 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002240
2241New platforms
2242-------------
2243
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002244None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002245
2246Tests
2247-----
2248
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002249- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2250 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002251
2252Windows
2253-------
2254
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002255- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2256 function.
2257
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002258- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2259 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002260
2261Mac
2262---
2263
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002264- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2265 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002266
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002267- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2268 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002269
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002270- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2271 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2272 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002273
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002274- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002275 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2276 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002277
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002278- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2279 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002280
2281
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002282What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2283=================================
2284
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002285*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002286
2287Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002288-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002289
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002290- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2291 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2292 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2293
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002294- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2295 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2296 (SF patch #664376.)
2297
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002298- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2299 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2300 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2301 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2302 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2303 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002304 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002305
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002306- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2307 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2308 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2309 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002310 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002311
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002312- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2313 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2314 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2315 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2316 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2317 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2318 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2319 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2320 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2321 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2322 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2323
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002324- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2325 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2326 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2327 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2328 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2329 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2330
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002331- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2332 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2333
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002334- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2335 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2336 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2337 case.)
2338
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002339- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2340 passed as unicode strings.
2341
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002342- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2343 See SF bug #683467.
2344
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002345- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2346 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2347
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002348- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2349
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002350- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2351
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002352- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2353 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2354 arguments.
2355
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002356- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2357 See SF bug #667147.
2358
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002359- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002360 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002361 See SF bug #676155.
2362
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002363- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002364 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002365 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2366 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2367 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2368 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2369 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2370 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002371
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002372Extension modules
2373-----------------
2374
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002375- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2376 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2377 tp_as_number pointer.
2378
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002379- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2380 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2381 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2382 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2383 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2384
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002385- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2386
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002387- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2388
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002389- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002390 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002391 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2392 patch #678531.)
2393
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002394- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2395 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2396
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002397- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2398 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2399
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002400- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2401
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002402- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2403 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2404 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2405
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002406- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2407
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002408- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2409 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2410
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002411- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002412
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002413- datetime changes:
2414
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002415 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2416
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002417 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2418 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2419 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2420 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2421 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2422 now.
2423
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002424 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002425 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2426 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002427
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002428 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002429 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002430 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2431 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2432 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2433 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002434
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002435 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2436 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2437 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002438 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2439
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002440 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2441 by a later example coded by Guido.
2442
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002443 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002444 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2445 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2446 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002447 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2448 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2449
2450 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2451 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2452 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2453 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2454 tzinfo subclass instance.
2455
2456 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2457 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2458 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2459 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2460 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2461 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2462 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2463 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002464
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002465 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2466 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2467 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2468 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2469 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002470 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2471
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002472 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002473
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002474 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2475 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2476 as a naive datetime object.
2477
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002478 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2479 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2480 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2481
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002482 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2483 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2484 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2485 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2486 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2487 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2488 comparison.
2489
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002490 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2491 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2492 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2493 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002494 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002495
2496 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002497
2498 and ::
2499
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002500 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2501
2502 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2503 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2504 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2505 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2506
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002507 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2508 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2509 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2510 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2511 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2512
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002513 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2514 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002515 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2516 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002517
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002518Library
2519-------
2520
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002521- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2522 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2523
2524- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2525 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2526 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2527 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2528 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2529 See PEP 307 for details.
2530
2531- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2532 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2533
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002534- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2535 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002536 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002537 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2538 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002539 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002540
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002541- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2542 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2543
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002544- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2545 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2546 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2547
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002548- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2549
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002550- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2551 exception.
2552
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002553- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2554 class.
2555
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002556- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2557 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2558 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2559
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002560- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2561 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2562
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002563- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002564 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2565 See SF bug #659228.
2566
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002567- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2568 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2569 See SF patch #651082.
2570
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002571- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002572
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002573- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2574 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2575
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002576- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002577 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002578
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002579- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2580 DOS paths from other platforms.
2581
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002582Tools/Demos
2583-----------
2584
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002585- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2586 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2587 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2588 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2589 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2590 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2591 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2592 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2593 example:
2594
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002595 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2596 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002597
2598 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2599
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002600
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002601Build
2602-----
2603
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002604- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2605 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2606 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002607 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2608
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002609 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2610
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002611- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2612 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2613 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2614 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2615 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2616 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2617 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2618 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2619 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2620
2621- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2622 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2623 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2624 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2625
2626- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2627 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2628
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002629C API
2630-----
2631
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002632- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2633 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002634
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002635- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2636 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2637 tp_as_number pointer.
2638
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002639- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2640 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2641 (SF #681367)
2642
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002643- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2644 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2645 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2646 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002647
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002648Tests
2649-----
2650
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002651- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002652 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2653 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2654 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2655 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2656 pydoc.)
2657
2658- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2659
2660- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002661
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002662Windows
2663-------
2664
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002665- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2666 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2667 time).
2668
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002669- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2670 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2671
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002672- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2673 release without strong cryptography.
2674
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002675- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002676 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002677
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002678- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2679 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2680
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002681Mac
2682---
2683
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002684- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2685 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002686
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002687- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2688 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2689 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002690
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002691- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2692 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002693
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002694- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2695 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2696 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2697 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002698
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002699- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002700 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2701 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2702 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002703
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002704
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002705What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002706=================================
2707
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002708*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002709
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002710Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002711--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002712
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002713- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2714
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002715- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2716 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002717 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002718 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002719 a different meaning than before.
2720
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002721- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002722 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002723 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002724
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002725- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002726 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002727 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002728
2729- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2730 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2731 and deallocation.
2732
2733- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2734 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2735
2736- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2737 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2738 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2739 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2740 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2741
2742- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2743 now detected by the garbage collector.
2744
2745- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2746 [SF bug 519621]
2747
2748- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2749 identifier.
2750
2751- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2752 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2753 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2754 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2755 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2756 [SF bug 563060]
2757
2758- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2759 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2760 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2761 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2762 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2763
2764- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2765 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2766 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2767
2768- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2769
2770- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2771 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2772 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2773 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2774 state of the slots would be lost.)
2775
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002776Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002777-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002778
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002779- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002780 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2781 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2782 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2783 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002784 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2785 Jython 2.1.
2786
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002787- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002788 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002789 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2790 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2791 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2792 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2793 these, see PEP 302.
2794
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002795- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2796 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2797 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2798
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002799- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2800 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2801 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2802
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002803- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2804 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2805 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2806
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002807- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2808 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2809 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2810 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2811 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2812 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2813 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2814 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2815 releases or implementations.
2816
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002817- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002818 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2819 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002820
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002821- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2822 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2823
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002824- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2825 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2826 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2827
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002828- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2829 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2830
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002831- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2832 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002833 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2834 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002835
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002836- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2837 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2838 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2839 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2840 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2841
2842 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2843 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2844 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2845 pattern.
2846
2847 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2848 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2849 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2850 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2851
2852 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2853 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2854 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2855 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2856 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2857 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2858
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002859- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2860 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2861 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2862 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2863 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2864 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2865 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2866 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002867
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002868- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2869 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2870 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2871 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2872 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002873 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2874 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2875 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2876 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2877 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2878 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2879 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002880
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002881- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2882 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2883
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002884- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2885 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2886 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2887 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2888 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2889 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2890 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2891 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2892 to Zack Weinberg!
2893
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002894- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2895 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2896 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2897 type. This has been fixed now.
2898
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002899- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2900 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2901 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2902
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002903- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2904 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2905 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2906 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2907 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2908 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2909 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2910 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002911 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002912
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002913- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2914 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2915 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002916
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002917- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2918 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2919 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2920 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2921 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2922 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2923 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2924 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002925 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002926 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2927 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2928
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002929- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2930 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2931 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2932 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2933 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2934 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2935 this.)
2936
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002937- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2938 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002939 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002940 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002941 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2942 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002943 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2944 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002945
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002946- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2947 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2948 currently running.
2949
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002950- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2951 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2952 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2953 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2954
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002955- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2956 as directory names.
2957
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002958- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2959 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2960
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002961- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2962 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2963
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002964- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002965 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2966 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002967
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002968- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2969 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2970 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2971 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2972 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2973
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002974- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2975 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2976 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2977 removed.
2978
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002979- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2980 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2981 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2982
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002983- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2984 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2985 to __debug__.
2986
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002987- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2988 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2989 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2990
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002991- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2992 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2993 deprecated now.
2994
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002995- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2996 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2997 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002998
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002999- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3000 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3001 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3002 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3003 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003004
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003005- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3006 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3007
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003008- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3009 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3010 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003011 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003012 is backward compatible.
3013
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003014- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3015 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3016 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3017 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3018 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3019
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003020- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3021 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3022 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3023 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3024 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3025 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003026
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003027- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3028 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3029
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003030- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3031 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3032
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003033- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3034 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3035 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3036 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3037 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3038
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003039- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3040 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3041 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3042
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003043- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003044 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3045
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003046- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3047 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3048 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003049
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003050- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3051 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3052
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003053- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3054 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3055 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3056
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003057- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3058
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003059Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003060-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003061
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003062- Added three operators to the operator module:
3063 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3064 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3065 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3066
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003067- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3068
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003069- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3070 archives.
3071
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003072- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3073 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3074 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3075
3076 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3077
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003078- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3079 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3080 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003081 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003082
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003083- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3084 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3085 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3086 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003087 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3088 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3089 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3090 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003091
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003092- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3093 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003094
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003095- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3096
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003097- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3098 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3099
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003100- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3101 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3102 supported.
3103
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003104- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3105
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003106- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3107 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003108
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003109- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3110 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3111
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003112- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3113
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003114- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3115 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3116
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003117- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3118 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3119 functions but callable type objects.
3120
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003121- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003122 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003123 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003124
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003125- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3126 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003127
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003128- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3129 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003130
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003131- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3132 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3133 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3134 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3135
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003136- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3137 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003138
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003139- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3140 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3141 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3142 and __imul__.
3143
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003144- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003145 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3146 is called.
3147
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003148- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3149 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3150 interpreter was compiled.
3151
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003152- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3153 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3154 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003155 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003156 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3157 1, not 2.
3158
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003159- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3160 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3161 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3162 limit.
3163
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003164- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3165 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3166 bug #623464.
3167
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003168- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3169 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3170 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3171 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3172
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003173Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003174-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003175
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003176- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3177
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003178- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3179 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3180 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3181 with Python 2.3a2.
3182
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003183- os.path exposes getctime.
3184
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003185- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003186 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003187 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003188 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003189 unit tests of floating point results.
3190
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003191- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3192 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3193 has been increased.
3194
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003195- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3196 executed.
3197
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003198- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3199 postinstallation script.
3200
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003201- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3202 test the current module.
3203
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003204- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003205 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3206 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3207 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3208 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3209
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003210- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003211 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003212 Ward's Optik package.
3213
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003214- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3215 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3216 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3217 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3218
3219- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3220 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003221 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003222
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003223- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3224 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3225 shelf are binary pickles.
3226
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003227- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3228 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3229
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003230- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3231 modules are iterators now.
3232
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003233- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3234 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3235 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3236 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3237 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3238 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003239
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003240- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3241 with their entity value.
3242
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003243- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3244
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003245- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3246 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003247
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003248- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3249 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003250 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003251
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003252- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3253 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3254 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3255 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3256 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3257 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3258 main():
3259
3260 import locale
3261 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3262
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003263- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3264 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3265
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003266- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3267 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3268 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3269 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3270 to the new standard.
3271
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003272- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3273 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3274 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3275 an extension to the database.
3276
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003277- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3278 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3279 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3280 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003281 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003282
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003283- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003284 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003285
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003286- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3287 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3288 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3289 bounded integers.
3290
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003291- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3292 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3293 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3294 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3295 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3296 in existence.
3297
3298 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3299 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3300 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3301 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3302 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3303 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3304
3305 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3306 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3307 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3308 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3309
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003310- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3311 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3312 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3313
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003314- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3315
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003316- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3317 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3318 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3319 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3320
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003321- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3322 argument.
3323
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003324- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3325 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3326 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3327 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3328 [SF patch 560794].
3329
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003330- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3331 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3332 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003333 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3334 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3335 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003336
3337- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3338 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003339
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003340- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3341 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3342 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3343 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003344
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003345- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3346 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3347 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3348 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3349 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3350
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003351- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003352
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003353- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3354
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003355- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3356 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3357 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3358 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3359 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3360 identical to None.
3361
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003362- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3363 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3364 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3365 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3366 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3367 results now.
3368
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003369- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3370 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3371
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003372- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3373 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3374 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3375 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3376 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3377 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3378 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3379 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3380
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003381- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3382
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003383- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3384 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3385
3386- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3387 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3388 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3389 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3390 and other systems.
3391
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003392- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3393 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3394 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3395 UTF-16 is a 2-byte encoding and the C lib's line reading APIs don't
Marc-André Lemburg4179a012002-04-05 12:15:05 +00003396 work well with these.
3397
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003398- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3399
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003400- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003401 connections.
3402
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003403- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3404 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3405 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3406
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003407- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3408 sets
3409
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003410- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3411 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3412 name.
3413
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003414- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3415 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3416 passed in.
3417
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003418- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003419 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003420 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3421 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003422
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003423- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3424
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003425- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3426
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003427- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3428 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3429 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3430
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003431- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3432 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3433 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3434 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003435 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003436
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003437- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003438 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003439 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003440
3441- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3442 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3443 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3444
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003445- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003446 the value of its expression argument.
3447
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003448- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3449 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3450 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3451
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003452- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3453 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3454 skipstone browser was included.
3455
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003456- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3457 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3458
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003459Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003460-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003461
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003462- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3463 names in addition to accepting file names.
3464
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003465- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3466 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3467 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3468 still used and useful.)
3469
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003470- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3471 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3472 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3473 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003474
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003475- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3476 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3477 the generated binary.
3478
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003479Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003480-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003481
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003482- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3483
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003484- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3485 except in the hands of experts.
3486
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003487- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003488 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3489 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3490 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003491
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003492- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3493 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3494 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3495 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3496 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3497 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3498 builds.
3499
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003500- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3501 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3502 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3503 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3504 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3505 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3506 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3507 new type.
3508
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003509- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003510
3511 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3512 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3513 positive infinities.
3514
3515 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3516 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3517 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3518 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3519 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3520 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3521 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3522
3523 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3524
3525 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3526
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003527- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3528 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3529 size of the executable.
3530
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003531- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3532 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3533 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3534 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003535
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003536- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3537
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003538- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3539 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3540 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003541
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003542- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3543 well as Unix.
3544
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003545- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3546 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3547 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3548 modules in the README file for details.
3549
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003550C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003551-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003552
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003553- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3554 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003555 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003556 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003557 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003558
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003559- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3560 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3561 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3562 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3563 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3564 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003565 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003566 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3567 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3568 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3569 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3570 aligned.)
3571
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003572- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3573 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3574 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3575
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003576- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3577 level.
3578
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003579- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3580 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3581 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3582 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3583 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3584
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003585- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3586 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3587 code.
3588
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003589- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3590 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3591 adjusting for negative indices.
3592
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003593- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3594 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3595 object.
3596
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003597- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3598 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3599 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3600
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003601- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3602 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003603
3604- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3605
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003606- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3607 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3608 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3609 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3610
3611- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3612
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003613- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003614
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003615- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003616 without going through the buffer API.
3617
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003618- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003619
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003620- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3621 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3622 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3623 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3624
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003625- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3626 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3627
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003628- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003629 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3630
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003631New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003632-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003633
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003634- OpenVMS is now supported.
3635
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003636- AtheOS is now supported.
3637
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003638- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3639
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003640- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3641
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003642Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003643-----
3644
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003645- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3646 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3647 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003648
3649Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003650-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003651
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003652- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3653 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3654 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3655 bugs.
3656 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003657 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003658 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3659 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003660 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003661
3662- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003663 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003664
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003665- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3666 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3667
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003668- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3669 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003670 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003671 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3672
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003673- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3674 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3675 use files" uninstall option).
3676
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003677- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3678
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003679- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3680 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3681
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003682- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3683 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3684 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3685
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003686- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3687 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3688 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3689 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3690 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003691 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3692 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3693 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003694
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003695- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003696 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003697 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3698 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3699 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3700 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3701 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3702 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3703 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3704 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3705 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3706 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3707 work around.
3708
3709- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3710 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3711 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3712 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3713 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3714 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3715 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3716 specified with O_CREAT too).
3717
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003718Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003719----
3720
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003721- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003722
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003723- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3724 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3725 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3726
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003727- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3728 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3729 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3730
3731- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3732 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3733 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3734 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3735 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3736 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3737 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3738 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003739
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003740- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3741 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3742 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003743
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003744- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3745 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3746 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3747 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3748 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003749
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003750- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3751 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3752 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003753
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003754- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3755 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003756
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003757- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3758 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3759 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3760 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3761 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003762
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003763- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3764 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3765 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3766
3767- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3768 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3769 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003770
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003771- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3772 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3773 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3774 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003775 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003776
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003777- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3778 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003779
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003780- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3781 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003782
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003783- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003784 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003785 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3786 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003787
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003788
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003789What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003790===============================
3791
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003792*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3793
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003794Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003795--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003796
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003797- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3798 with a custom metaclass.
3799
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003800Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003801-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003802
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003803- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3804 are proxies.
3805
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003806Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003807-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003808
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003809- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3810 very short strings.
3811
3812- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3813 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3814 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3815 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3816 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3817
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003818Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003819-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003820
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003821- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3822 close or delete time).
3823
3824- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3825 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3826
3827- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3828
3829- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003830 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003831
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003832Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003833-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003834
3835Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003836-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003837
3838C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003839-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003840
3841New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003842-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003843
3844Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003845-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003846
3847Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003848-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003849
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003850- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3851
3852- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3853 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3854
3855- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3856 deleted at process exit time.
3857
3858- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3859 in backslash.
3860
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003861Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003862----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003863
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003864- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3865 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3866 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3867
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003868
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003869What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003870===========================
3871
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003872*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3873
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003874Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003875--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003876
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003877- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3878 been extensively updated. See
3879
3880 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3881
3882 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3883
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003884- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3885 deleted!
3886
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003887- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3888 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3889 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3890 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3891 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3892
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003893- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3894
3895 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3896 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3897
3898 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3899 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3900 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3901 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3902 supported anyway.
3903
3904 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3905 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3906
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003907- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3908 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3909 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3910 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3911 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003912
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003913- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3914 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3915 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3916
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003917Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003918-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003919
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003920- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3921 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3922 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3923 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3924 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3925 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003926 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3927 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3928 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3929 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003930
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003931- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3932 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3933 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3934
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003935Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003936-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003937
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003938- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3939
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003940Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003941-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003942
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003943- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3944 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3945 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3946 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3947 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3948 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3949
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003950- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3951
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003952- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3953
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003954- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3955
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003956- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3957 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3958 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3959
3960- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3961
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003962Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003963-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003964
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003965- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3966 off a search on Google.
3967
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003968Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003969-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003970
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003971- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3972 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3973 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3974 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3975 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3976 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3977 other platforms should do likewise.
3978
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003979- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3980 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3981 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3982
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003983C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003984-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003985
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003986- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3987 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3988 producing key-value pairs.
3989
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003990- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003991 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003992 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3993 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3994 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3995 previously went unchallenged.
3996
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003997New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003998-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003999
4000Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004001-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004002
4003Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004004-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004005
4006Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004007----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004008
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004009- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4010 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004011
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004012- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4013 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4014 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4015 home.
4016
4017
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004018What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004019===========================
4020
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004021*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4022
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004023Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004024--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004025
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004026- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4027 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004028
4029 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004030 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004031
4032 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4033 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004034 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004035 This needs to be documented.
4036
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004037- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4038 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4039
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004040- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4041 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4042 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4043
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004044- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4045 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4046
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004047- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4048 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4049 class forbids it).
4050
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004051- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4052 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4053 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4054
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004055- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4056
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004057Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004058-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004059
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004060- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4061 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004062 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004063
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004064- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4065 (like 1 + '').
4066
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004067Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004068-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004069
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004070- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4071 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4072 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4073 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004074 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004075 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4076
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004077- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4078 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4079 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4080 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4081
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004082- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4083 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004084 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4085 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4086 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004087
4088- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4089 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004090
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004091- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4092 bytes on its input.
4093
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004094Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004095-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004096
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004097- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004098 convenience function.
4099
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004100- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4101 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4102 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004103 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4104 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4105 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4106 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4107 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4108 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004109
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004110- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4111 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4112 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4113 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4114
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004115- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4116 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4117 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4118
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004119- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4120 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4121 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4122 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4123
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004124- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4125 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004126 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004127 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4128 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4129 new -l and -e options.
4130
4131- statcache is now deprecated.
4132
4133- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4134 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004135 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004136 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4137 time properly taken into account.
4138
4139- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4140 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4141 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4142 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4143
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004144Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004145-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004146
4147Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004148-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004149
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004150- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4151 is built with libdb3 if available.
4152
4153- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4154
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004155C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004156-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004157
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004158- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4159 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4160 PySequence_Size().
4161
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004162- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4163
4164- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4165 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4166 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4167
4168- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4169 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4170
4171- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4172 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4173
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004174New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004175-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004176
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004177- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4178 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4179
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004180- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4181 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4182
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004183- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4184
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004185Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004186-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004187
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004188- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4189 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4190
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004191Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004192-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004193
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004194Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004195----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004196
4197- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4198 removed completely in the next release.
4199
4200- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4201 OSX.
4202
4203- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4204 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4205
4206- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4207
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004208
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004209What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004210===========================
4211
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004212*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4213
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004214Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004215--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004216
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004217- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004218 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004219 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004220 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4221 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004222 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4223 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004224 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4225 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004226
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004227- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4228 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4229
4230- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4231 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4232
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004233Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004234-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004235
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004236- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4237 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4238 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4239 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4240 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4241 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4242 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4243 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4244
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004245- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4246 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4247 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4248 example).
4249
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004250- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004251 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004252 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004253 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004254
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004255- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4256 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4257 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004258 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004259
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004260- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4261 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4262 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4263 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4264 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4265 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4266
4267 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4268
4269 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4270
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004271Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004272-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004273
4274- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4275
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004276- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4277
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004278- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4279 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004280
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004281- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4282 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4283 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4284 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4285 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4286 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004287 attributes.
4288
4289- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4290 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4291 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004292
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004293- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4294 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4295 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004296
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004297- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4298 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4299 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004300 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4301 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4302
4303- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4304 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004305
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004306Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004307-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004308
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004309- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4310 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4311
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004312- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4313 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4314 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4315 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4316
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004317- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4318 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4319 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4320 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4321
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004322 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4323 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4324 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4325 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4326 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4327 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4328 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4329 without losing information).
4330
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004331- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004332 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4333 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4334 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4335 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4336 module).
4337
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004338 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004339 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4340 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4341 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4342 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004343
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004344- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004345 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4346 encoding.
4347
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004348- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4349 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4350
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004351- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004352 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4353
4354- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4355 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4356 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4357 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4358
4359- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4360
4361- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4362 ON, and OFF.
4363
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004364- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4365 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4366
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004367Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004368-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004369
4370- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4371 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4372 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004373
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004374- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4375 been added: -X and -E.
4376
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004377Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004378-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004379
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004380- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4381 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4382
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004383C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004384-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004385
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004386- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4387 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4388 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4389 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4390 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4391
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004392- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4393 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4394 as long) arguments.
4395
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004396- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4397 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4398 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4399 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4400 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4401 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4402
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004403- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4404 input.
4405
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004406New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004407-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004408
4409Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004410-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004411
4412Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004413-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004414
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004415- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4416 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4417 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4418
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004419- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4420 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4421 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004422 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004423
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004424 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4425 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4426 import signal
4427 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004428
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004429 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004430 while 1:
4431 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004432 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004433 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4434 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4435 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4436 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004437
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004438
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004439What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4440===========================
4441
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004442*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4443
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004444Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004445--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004446
4447- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4448 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4449 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4450
4451- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4452 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4453 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4454 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4455 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4456 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4457 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004458
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004459- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004460 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004461 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4462 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4463 associate a docstring with a property.
4464
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004465- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4466 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4467 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4468 other built-in object types.
4469
4470- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4471 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4472 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4473 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4474 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4475
4476- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4477 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4478
4479- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4480 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004481 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004482 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4483 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4484 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4485 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4486 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4487
4488- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4489 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4490 class.
4491
4492- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4493 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4494 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4495 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4496
4497- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4498 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4499 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4500 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4501
4502- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4503 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4504
4505- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4506 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4507 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4508 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4509 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004510 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004511 with the same value as s.
4512
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004513- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4514
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004515Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004516----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004517
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004518- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4519
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004520- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4521 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4522 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4523 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4524 objects.
4525
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004526- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4527 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004528 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4529 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4530
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004531- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4532 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4533 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4534
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004535Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004536-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004537
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004538- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4539 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4540 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4541 by the instances.
4542
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004543- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4544 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4545 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4546
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004547- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4548 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4549 before the entire comparison is complete.
4550
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004551- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4552 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4553 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4554
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004555- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4556 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4557 getwriter().
4558
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004559- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4560 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4561
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004562- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004563 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4564 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4565
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004566- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4567 iterable object.
4568
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004569- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4570 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004571
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004572- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4573 authentication.
4574
4575- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4576 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004577
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004578- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004579 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4580 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4581 a sample driver.)
4582
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004583Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004584-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004585
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004586- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4587 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4588 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4589 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4590 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4591 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4592 kernel has large file support.
4593
4594- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4595 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4596 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4597 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4598 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4599
4600- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4601 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4602 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4603
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004604C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004605-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004606
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004607- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4608 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4609
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004610New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004611-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004612
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004613- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4614 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4615
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004616Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004617-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004618
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004619- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4620 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4621 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4622 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4623 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4624
4625- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4626 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4627 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4628 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4629
4630- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4631 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4632
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004633Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004634-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004635
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004636- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004637 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4638 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004639
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004640
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004641What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4642===========================
4643
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004644*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4645
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004646Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004647----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004648
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004649- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4650 big to represent as a C double.
4651
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004652- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4653 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4654 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4655 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4656 restriction).
4657
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004658- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4659 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4660 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4661 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4662 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4663
4664 >>> dir([])
4665 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4666 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4667 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4668 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4669 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4670 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4671 'reverse', 'sort']
4672
4673 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4674
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004675- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004676 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4677 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4678 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4679 OverflowError exception.
4680
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004681- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004682 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004683 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4684 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4685 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4686 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4687 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004688 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004689 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4690 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4691
4692 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4693 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4694 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4695 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004696
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004697- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004698 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4699 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4700 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4701 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4702 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4703 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4704 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4705 once it is created.
4706
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004707- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4708 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4709 (key, value) pairs.
4710
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004711- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004712 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4713 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4714
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004715- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4716 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4717 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4718 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4719 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004720
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004721- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004722 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4723 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4724
4725 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4726
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004727- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004728 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4729
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004730Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004731-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004732
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004733- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004734 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4735 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004736
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004737- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4738 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4739 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4740 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4741 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4742 in this area anymore).
4743
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004744- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4745 threading.Timer.
4746
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004747- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4748 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4749
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004750- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004751 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4752
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004753- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004754 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4755 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4756 converted to Python longs.
4757
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004758- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004759 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4760
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004761- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4762 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4763 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4764
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004765Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004766-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004767
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004768- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4769 division operators as per PEP 238.
4770
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004771Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004772-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004773
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004774- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4775 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4776 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4777 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4778
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004779C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004780-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004781
4782- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004783
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004784- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4785 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004786 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004787
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004788 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4789 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004790 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004791 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004792
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004793- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004794 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4795 module:
4796
4797 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004798
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004799 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4800 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004801
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004802 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4803 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004804
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004805 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4806
4807 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4808
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004809- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004810 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4811 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4812 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004813
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004814New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004815-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004816
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004817- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4818 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4819 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4820 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4821 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004822
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004823Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004824-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004825
4826Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004827-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004828
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004829- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4830 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4831 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4832 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004833 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4834 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4835 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4836 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4837 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004838
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004839- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004840 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4841
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004842
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004843What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4844===========================
4845
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004846*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4847
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004848Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004849-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004850
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004851- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4852 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4853
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004854- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4855 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4856 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004857
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004858- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4859 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4860 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4861 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004862
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004863- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4864
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004865- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004866
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004867Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004868-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004869
4870- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004871 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004872 the module docstring for details.
4873
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004874Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004875-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004876
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004877- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004878 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4879 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4880 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004881
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004882- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4883 Nick Mathewson.
4884
4885Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004886----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004887
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004888- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4889 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4890 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4891 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4892 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4893 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4894 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4895 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4896
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004897- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4898 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4899 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4900 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4901
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004902- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4903 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4904 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4905 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4906 come a long way).
4907
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004908- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4909 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4910 write filters for these warnings).
4911
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004912- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4913 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4914 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4915 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4916 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4917
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004918- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4919 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4920 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4921 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4922 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4923 older distribution.
4924
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004925Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004926-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004927
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004928- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4929 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004930 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004931
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004932- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4933 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4934 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4935
4936- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4937
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004938- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4939
4940- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4941
4942- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4943
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004944- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004945
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004946- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4947
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004948New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004949-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004950
4951C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004952-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004953
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004954- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4955 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4956 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4957 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4958 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4959 against buffer overruns.
4960
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004961- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004962 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4963 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004964 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4965 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4966 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4967
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004968- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4969 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4970 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4971 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4972 deprecated.
4973
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004974Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004975-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004976
4977- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4978 relevant is found.
4979
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004980
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004981What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004982===========================
4983
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004984*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4985
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004986Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004987----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004988
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004989- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4990 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4991 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4992 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4993 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4994 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4995 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4996 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004997 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004998 repaired.
4999
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005000- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005001 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005002 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5003 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5004 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5005 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5006 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5007 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5008 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5009 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5010
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005011- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5012 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5013 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5014 leading BMO character).
5015
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005016- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5017 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5018 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5019
5020 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5021 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5022 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005023
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005024 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5025 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5026 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5027 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5028 for various simple to use conversions.
5029
5030 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5031 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5032
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005033 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5034 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5035 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5036 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5037 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5038 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5039 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5040 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5041 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5042 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5043 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5044 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5045 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5046 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5047 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005048
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005049- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5050 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5051 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005052 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005053 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005054
5055 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005056 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5057 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5058 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5059 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5060 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005061 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5062 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005063
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005064 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5065 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5066 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005067 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005068
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005069- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5070 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5071 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5072 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5073 floating arithmetic,
5074
5075 x = 9007199254740992.0
5076 print long(x)
5077
5078 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5079 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5080 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5081 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5082 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5083 functions are of good quality).
5084
5085 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5086 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5087 algorithms to break.
5088
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005089- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5090 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5091 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5092 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5093 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5094 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5095 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5096 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5097 order.
5098
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005099- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5100 operation along the most common code paths.
5101
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005102- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5103 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5104
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005105- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5106 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5107 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5108 {}.update(UserDict())
5109
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005110- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5111 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5112 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5113 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5114 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5115 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5116 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5117 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5118
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005119- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005120 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005121
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005122 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005123 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5124 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005125 join() method of strings
5126 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005127 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5128 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005129 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005130 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005131
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005132- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5133 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5134
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005135- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5136 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5137
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005138- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5139 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5140 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5141 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5142
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005143- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5144 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005145 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005146 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5147 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005148
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005149- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5150
5151
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005152Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005153-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005154
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005155- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005156 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005157 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5158 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5159
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005160- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5161 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5162
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005163- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5164 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5165 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5166 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5167
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005168- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5169 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5170 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5171
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005172- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5173
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005174- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5175
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005176- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5177 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5178 that are still imported into string.py).
5179
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005180- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5181
5182- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5183 Now it does.
5184
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005185- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5186
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005187- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5188 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5189 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5190 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5191 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005192 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5193 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005194
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005195- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5196 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5197 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5198 'help(object)'.
5199
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005200Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005201-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005202
5203- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005204 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005205 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5206 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5207
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005208- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005209 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5210 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005211
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005212C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005213-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005214
5215- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5216 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005217
5218----
5219
5220**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**