blob: 40be84ce2f511ef16ccc1b925f89351e6e5ae51d [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000015- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
16 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
17 message in this case.
18
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000019- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
20 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
21 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
22 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
23 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
24
25- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
26
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000027- Speed up some Unicode operations.
28
29- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
30
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000031- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000032 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
33
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000034- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
35
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000036- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
37 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
38
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000039- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
40
41- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
42
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000043- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
44 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
45 was empty.
46
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000047- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
48 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
49
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000050- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000051 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000052
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000053- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
54 codes.
55
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000056- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
57 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
58 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
59
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000060- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
61 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
62
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000063- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000064 (fixes bug #1119418).
65
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000066- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
67
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000068- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
69 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
70
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000071- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
72 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
73 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
74
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000075- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
76
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000077- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
78 reference counts in some error exit cases.
79
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000080- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
81 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
82 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
83 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
84 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
85 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
86 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
87 realloc.
88
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000089- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
90 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
91
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000092- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
93 like their int counterparts.
94
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000095- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
96 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
97 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
98 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
99 for a longer write-up of the problem).
100
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000101- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
102 serializing floats.
103
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000104- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
105 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
106 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
107
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000108- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
109 278.
110
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000111- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
112 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
113 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
114 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000115 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000116 PyNumber_*().
117 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
118
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000119- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
120 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
121 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
122 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
123
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000124- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
125 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
126 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
127 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
128 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
129
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000130- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
131 disabled caused a crash.
132
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000133- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
134 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
135
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000136- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000137 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
138
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000139- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
140
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000141- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000142 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
143 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
144 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000145
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000146- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
147
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000148- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
149 returning None.
150
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000151- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000152 ('\') with a specific error message.
153
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000154- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
155
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000156- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
157 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
158
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000159- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000160 an ferror() call.
161
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000162- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
163 list.sort().
164
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000165- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
166 (2+3) --> (5).
167
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000168- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
169
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000170- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
171 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000172
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000173- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
174 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
175 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
176
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000177- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
178 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
179 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
180
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000181Extension Modules
182-----------------
183
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000184- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
185
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000186- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
187
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000188- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
189 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
190
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000191- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
192
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000193- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
194 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
195
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000196- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
197
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000198- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
199 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
200
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000201- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
202 returns in cStringIO.c.
203
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000204- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
205 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
206
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000207- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
208
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000209- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
210
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000211- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
212 the file system encoding.
213
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000214- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
215 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000216
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000217- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
218
219- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000220 line without newlines.
221
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000222- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
223 on Windows.
224
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000225- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000226 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
227
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000228- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
229 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
230 for large or negative values.
231
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000232- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000233 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000234
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000235- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
236
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000237- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
238 if available on the platform.
239
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000240- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
241 available on the platform.
242
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000243- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
244 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
245
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000246- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
247
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000248- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
249 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
250 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
251
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000252- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
253
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000254- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
255 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
256
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000257- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000258 file size.
259
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000260- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
261
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000262- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
263 {remove_history,replace_history}
264
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000265- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
266 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000267
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000268- stat_float_times is now True.
269
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000270- array.array objects are now picklable.
271
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000272- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
273 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
274
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000275- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
276 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
277 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
278
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000279- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
280 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000281
282Library
283-------
284
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000285- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
286 is an error in the format string.
287
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000288- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
289
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000290- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000291 "parent" argument.
292
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000293- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
294 for padding.
295
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000296- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
297 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
298
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000299- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
300 to get the correct encoding.
301
302- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
303 languages.
304
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000305- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
306
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000307- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
308
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000309- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
310
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000311- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
312 functionality.
313
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000314- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
315
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000316- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
317 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
318
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000319- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
320 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
321 match the Content-Length header.
322
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000323- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
324
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000325- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
326 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000327 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000328
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000329- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
330
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000331- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
332
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000333- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
334 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
335
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000336- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
337 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
338 Tkdnd.
339
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000340- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
341 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
342
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000343- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
344 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
345
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000346- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000347 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
348
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000349- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
350 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
351
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000352- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
353 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
354
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000355- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000356 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000357
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000358- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
359
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000360- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
361 error messages.
362
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000363- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
364
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000365- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
366 Bug #1224621.
367
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000368- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
369 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
370 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
371 terminates by raising StopIteration.
372
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000373- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
374
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000375- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
376 component of the path.
377
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000378- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
379 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
380 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
381 class at all.
382
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000383- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
384 files to PyPI.
385
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000386- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
387 them to PyPI.
388
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000389- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
390 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
391 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
392 work as expected.
393
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000394- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
395 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
396
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000397- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000398 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
399
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000400- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
401
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000402- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
403 to build.
404
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000405- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
406 symbolic links on Windows.
407
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000408- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000409 profile.py if available.
410
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000411- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
412
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000413- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
414 in LWPCookieJar.
415
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000416- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
417
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000418- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
419
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000420- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
421
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000422- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
423
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000424- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
425
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000426- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
427
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000428- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
429
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000430- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
431
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000432- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
433 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
434 be exploited in various ways.
435
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000436- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
437
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000438- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
439
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000440- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
441
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000442- Enhancements to the csv module:
443
444 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000445 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000446 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000447 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
448 reporting.
449 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
450 dictates.
451 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000452 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000453 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000454 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
455 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000456 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
457 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000458 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000459 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
460 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
461 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
462 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
463 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
464 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
465 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
466 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
467 without first creating a dialect class.
468 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
469 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
470 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000471 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000472 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
473 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000474 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
475 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
476 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
477 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000478 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
479 This has been fixed.
480
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000481- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
482 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
483 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
484 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
485
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000486- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
487
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000488- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
489 (Bug #951915).
490
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000491- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
492 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
493 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000494 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000495
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000496- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
497
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000498- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
499 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
500
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000501- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
502
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000503- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
504
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000505- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
506
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000507- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
508
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000509- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
510
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000511- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
512 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
513 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
514
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000515- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000516 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000517
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000518- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
519 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
520 tokenizer with very long source lines.
521
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000522- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
523 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
524
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000525- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
526 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000527
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000528- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
529 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
530
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000531- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
532 correctly.
533
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000534- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
535 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
536 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
537 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
538 between two lines.
539
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000540- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
541 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
542 handlers.
543
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000544- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000545 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
546 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000547
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000548- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
549 considering it exactly like a '*'.
550
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000551- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
552 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000553
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000554- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
555
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000556Build
557-----
558
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000559- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
560 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
561
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000562- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
563 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
564
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000565- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
566 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
567 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000568 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000569
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000570- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
571 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
572 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
573
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000574- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
575
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000576- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
577 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
578
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000579- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
580 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
581 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
582 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
583 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
584 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
585 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
586 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
587
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000588- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
589 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
590 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
591 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
592
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000593
594C API
595-----
596
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000597- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
598
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000599- Removed PyRange_New().
600
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000601- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
602 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
603 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
604 mappings.
605
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000606
607Tests
608-----
609
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000610- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000611
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000612
613Documentation
614-------------
615
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000616- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
617
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000618- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
619
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000620- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
621
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000622- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
623
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000624- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
625
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000626- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
627
628- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
629
630- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
631
632- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
633
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000634- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
635 Closes bug #1166582.
636
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000637- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
638 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
639 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
640
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000641Mac
642---
643
644
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000645New platforms
646-------------
647
648- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
649
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000650
651Tools/Demos
652-----------
653
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000654- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
655 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
656 source files that need an encoding declaration.
657 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
658
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000659- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
660
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000661- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000662
663
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000664What's New in Python 2.4 final?
665===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000666
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000667*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000668
669Core and builtins
670-----------------
671
672- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
673 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
674 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
675
676
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000677What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
678==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000679
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000680*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000681
682Core and builtins
683-----------------
684
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000685- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
686 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
687 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
688
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000689
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000690Library
691-------
692
693- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
694 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
695 raised is re-raised.
696
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000697- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
698 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
699
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000700- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
701 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
702 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
703 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
704 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
705 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
706 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
707 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
708 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
709 by the slice are recomputed now.
710
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000711- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000712
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000713Build
714-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000715
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000716- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
717 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
718 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000719
720C API
721-----
722
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000723- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
724
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000725
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000726What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
727================================
728
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000729*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000730
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000731License
732-------
733
734The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
735is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
736changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
737Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
738intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
739durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
740the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
741License::
742
743 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
744
745says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
746to Python 2.1.1.
747
748The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
749License Version 2.
750
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000751Core and builtins
752-----------------
753
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000754- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
755 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
756 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
757 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
758 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
759 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
760 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
761 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
762 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
763 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
764
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000765- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000766
767Extension Modules
768-----------------
769
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000770- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
771 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
772 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
773 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000774
775Library
776-------
777
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000778- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
779 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
780 returned.
781
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000782- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
783
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000784- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
785 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
786
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000787- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
788
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000789- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
790 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000791
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000792- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
793
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000794- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
795
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000796- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000797 the source code is updated and reloaded.
798
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000799Build
800-----
801
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000802- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000803
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000804What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
805================================
806
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000807*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000808
809Core and builtins
810-----------------
811
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000812- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000813 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
814
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000815- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
816 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
817 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
818 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
819
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000820- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
821 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
822
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000823- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
824 constant.
825
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000826- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
827 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
828 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
829 large), and to anomalies such as
830 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
831 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
832 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
833 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000834
835Extension modules
836-----------------
837
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000838- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
839 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000840 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
841 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
842 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000843
844Library
845-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000846
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000847- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000848 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000849 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
850 --swig-cpp.
851
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000852- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
853 it is set.
854
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000855- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000856
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000857- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
858 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
859 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
860 Closes bug #1039270.
861
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000862- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000863
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000864 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000865 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
866 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
867 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
868 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
869 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
870 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
871 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
872 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
873 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
874 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
875 + Updates to documentation.
876
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000877- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
878 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
879 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
880 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
881
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000882- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000883
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000884- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
885 applications should use the getmember function.
886
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000887- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
888
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000889- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
890 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
891 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
892 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
893 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
894 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
895 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
896 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
897 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
898
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000899- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
900 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000901 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000902
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000903- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
904 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
905 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
906 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
907 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
908 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
909 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
910 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000911
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000912- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
913 the new public features (of which there are many).
914
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000915- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000916 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
917 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
918 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
919 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000920 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000921
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000922- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
923
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000924- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
925 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
926 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
927 options.
928
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000929- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
930 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
931 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
932 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
933 conditions under which non-string values work.
934
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000935Build
936-----
937
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000938- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
939 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
940 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
941
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000942- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
943 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
944 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
945 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
946 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000947
948C API
949-----
950
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000951- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
952 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
953
954- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
955
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000956- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
957 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
958 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
959 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
960 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
961 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
962 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
963 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
964 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
965
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000966- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
967
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000968- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
969 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
970 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000971
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000972Tests
973-----
974
975- test__locale ported to unittest
976
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000977Mac
978---
979
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000980- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
981 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
982 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000983
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000984Tools/Demos
985-----------
986
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000987- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
988 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
989 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
990 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
991 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000992
993
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000994What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
995=================================
996
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000997*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000998
999Core and builtins
1000-----------------
1001
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001002- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001003 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1004
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001005- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1006 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1007 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1008 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1009 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1010 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1011 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1012 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001013 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1014 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1015 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1016 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1017 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001018
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001019- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1020 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1021 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1022 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1023 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1024
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001025- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1026
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001027- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1028 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1029
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001030- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1031 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1032 modified the list.
1033
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001034- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1035 functions is now writable.
1036
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001037- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1038 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1039 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1040 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1041
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001042- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1043 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1044 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1045 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1046 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001047
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001048- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1049 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1050
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001051Extension modules
1052-----------------
1053
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001054- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1055
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001056- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1057 data.
1058
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001059- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1060 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1061 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1062 supposed to have been truncated away.
1063
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001064- Added socket.socketpair().
1065
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001066- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1067 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1068
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001069- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001070 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1071
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001072Library
1073-------
1074
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001075- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001076 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001077
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001078- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1079 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1080
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001081- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1082 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1083
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001084- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1085
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001086- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1087 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001088
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001089- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1090 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1091
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001092- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1093
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001094- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1095
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001096- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1097
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001098- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1099 Percivall.
1100
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001101- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1102 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1103
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001104- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1105 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1106 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001107 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001108
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001109- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1110 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1111 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1112 and exponent.
1113
1114- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1115
1116- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001117 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001118 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1119
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001120- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1121 to the readline module.
1122
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001123- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001124 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1125 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001126
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001127- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1128 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1129 contains symlinks.
1130
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001131- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1132 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1133
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001134- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1135 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1136 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1137
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001138- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1139 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1140 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1141 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1142 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1143 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1144 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1145 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1146 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1147 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1148 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1149 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1150 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1151
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001152- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1153
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001154Tools/Demos
1155-----------
1156
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001157- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1158 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1159
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001160- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1161
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001162Build
1163-----
1164
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001165- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1166 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1167 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1168 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1169 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1170 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1171 plans to do so.
1172
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001173- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1174 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1175
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001176- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1177 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1178
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001179- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1180 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1181
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001182- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1183 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1184
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001185- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1186 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1187
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001188C API
1189-----
1190
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001191..
1192
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001193Documentation
1194-------------
1195
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001196- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1197 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1198
1199- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1200 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1201 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001202
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001203New platforms
1204-------------
1205
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001206- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1207
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001208Tests
1209-----
1210
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001211..
1212
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001213Windows
1214-------
1215
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001216- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1217 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1218 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1219 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1220 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1221 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1222 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1223 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1224 the problem.
1225
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001226Mac
1227---
1228
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001229..
1230
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001231
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001232What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1233=================================
1234
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001235*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001236
1237Core and builtins
1238-----------------
1239
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001240- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1241 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1242 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1243 sensitive code.
1244
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001245- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001246 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001247
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001248 @staticmethod
1249 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001250
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001251 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001252
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001253- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1254 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1255 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1256 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1257 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1258 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1259 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1260 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1261 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1262 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1263 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1264
1265 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1266 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1267 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1268 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1269 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1270 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1271 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1272
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001273- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1274 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1275
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001276- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001277 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001278
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001279- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001280 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001281 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1282
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001283- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001284 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1285 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1286
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001287- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1288 types that support garbage collection.
1289
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001290- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1291
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001292- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1293 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1294 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1295 Jython.
1296
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001297- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1298
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001299- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1300 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1301
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001302- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1303 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1304 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001305
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001306- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1307 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1308 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1309
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001310Extension modules
1311-----------------
1312
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001313- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1314
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001315Library
1316-------
1317
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001318- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1319 TIS-620
1320
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001321- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1322 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1323 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1324 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1325 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1326 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1327 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1328 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1329 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1330 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1331
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001332- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1333
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001334- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1335 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1336 same as when the argument is omitted).
1337 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1338
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001339- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1340
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001341- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1342 schemes are offered.
1343
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001344- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1345
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001346- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1347 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1348 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1349
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001350- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1351
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001352- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1353 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1354
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001355- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1356 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1357 when dummy_threading is being used.
1358
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001359- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1360 from a tarfile.
1361
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001362- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001363 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001364
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001365- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1366 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1367 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1368 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1369
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001370- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1371 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1372
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001373- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1374 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1375 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1376 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1377 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1378 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1379 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1380 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1381 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1382 by some other method in progress).
1383
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001384- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1385 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1386 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001387
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001388- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1389
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001390- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1391 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1392 AM Kuchling.
1393
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001394- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1395 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1396 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1397
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001398- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1399 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1400 instead of unsigned.
1401
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001402- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001403 no longer part of the public API.
1404
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001405- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1406 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1407 string methods of the same name).
1408
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001409- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001410 SF patch 945642.
1411
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001412- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1413
1414 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1415
1416 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1417 DocTestSuites.
1418
1419- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1420 that provide thread-local data.
1421
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001422- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1423 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1424
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001425- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1426
1427- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1428 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1429 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1430
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001431- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1432
1433 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1434 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1435 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001436
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001437 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1438 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1439 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1440 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1441
1442 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1443 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1444
1445 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1446 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1447 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1448 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1449
1450 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1451 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1452 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1453 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1454 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1455
1456 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1457 wrapping help output.
1458
1459 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1460 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1461 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001462
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001463C API
1464-----
1465
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001466- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1467 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1468 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1469 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1470 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1471 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1472 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1473 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1474 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1475 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1476 its visible semantics have not changed.
1477
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001478- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1479 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1480
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001481Documentation
1482-------------
1483
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001484- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001485
1486 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001487 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001488
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001489 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001490
1491 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1492
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001493- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001494
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001495Tests
1496-----
1497
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001498- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001499 platforms that use the Makefile.
1500
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001501- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1502 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1503 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1504
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001505
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001506What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1507=================================
1508
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001509*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001510
1511Core and builtins
1512-----------------
1513
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001514- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1515 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1516 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1517 objects now (one object instead of three).
1518
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001519- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1520 Windows DLLs.
1521
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001522- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1523 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001524
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001525- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1526 a new .pyc magic.
1527
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001528- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1529 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1530 be there.
1531
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001532- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1533 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1534 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1535
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001536- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1537 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1538 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1539
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001540- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1541
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001542- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1543 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1544 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001545
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001546- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1547 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1548
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001549- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1550
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001551- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001552 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001553
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001554- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1555
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001556- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1557
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001558- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1559 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1560
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001561- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1562 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1563 Fixes bug #858016 .
1564
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001565- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1566 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1567 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1568
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001569- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1570 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1571 improves their performance (about 35%).
1572
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001573- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1574 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1575 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1576
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001577- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1578 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1579 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1580 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1581
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001582- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1583 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001584 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001585 length is not known).
1586
1587- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1588 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001589 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1590 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001591 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1592
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001593- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1594 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1595
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001596- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1597 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1598 keyword arguments.
1599
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001600- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1601 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1602 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1603
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001604- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1605 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1606 cases.
1607
1608- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1609 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1610 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1611 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1612 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1613 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1614 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1615 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1616 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1617 a release build.
1618
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001619- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1620 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1621
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001622- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001623 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001624
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001625- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1626 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1627 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1628 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1629 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1630 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1631 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1632 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1633 destroyed.
1634
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001635- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1636 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1637 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1638 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1639 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1640 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1641 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1642 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1643
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001644- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1645 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1646 character other than a space.
1647
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001648- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1649 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1650 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1651 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1652 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1653 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1654 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1655 attributes with the same name.
1656
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001657- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1658 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1659 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1660 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1661 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1662 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1663 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1664 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1665 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1666 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1667 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1668 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1669 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1670 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001671
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001672- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1673 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1674 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1675 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1676 This has been repaired.
1677
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001678- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1679
1680- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1681
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001682- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1683 over a sequence.
1684
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001685- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001686 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001687
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001688- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1689
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001690- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1691 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1692 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1693 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1694 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1695 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1696 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1697 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1698
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001699- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1700 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1701 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1702
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001703- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1704 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1705 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1706 freelist.
1707
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001708- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1709 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1710
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001711- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1712 number.
1713
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001714- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1715 a TypeError exception.
1716
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001717- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1718 820195.
1719
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001720- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1721 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1722 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1723
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001724- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001725 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1726 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001727
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001728- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1729 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1730 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1731
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001732- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1733 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001734 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001735
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001736- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001737 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1738 the first call.
1739
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001740
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001741Extension modules
1742-----------------
1743
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001744- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1745 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1746
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001747- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1748 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1749 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1750 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1751 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1752 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1753 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001754
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001755- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1756
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001757- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1758
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001759- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1760 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1761
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001762- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1763 fewer false positives.
1764
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001765- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1766 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1767
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001768- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001769 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1770
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001771- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001772 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001773 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001774 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1775 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001776
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001777- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1778 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1779 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1780 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1781
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001782- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1783 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1784 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1785 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1786 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1787 #897625.
1788
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001789- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1790 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1791
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001792- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1793 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1794 and pops on either side of the deque.
1795
1796- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1797 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1798
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001799- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1800 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1801 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1802 other functions that expect a function argument.
1803
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001804- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1805
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001806- os.getsid was added.
1807
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001808- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1809 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1810 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1811
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001812- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1813
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001814- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1815
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001816- readline.clear_history was added.
1817
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001818- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1819
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001820- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1821
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001822- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1823
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001824- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1825
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001826- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1827
1828- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1829
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001830- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1831
1832- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1833
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001834- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1835 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1836 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1837
1838- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1839 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1840 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1841 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1842 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1843 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1844 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1845
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001846- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1847 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1848 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1849 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001850
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001851- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001852 iterators from a single iterable.
1853
1854- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1855 of raising a TypeError exception.
1856
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001857- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1858 as parameter.
1859
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001860Library
1861-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001862
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001863- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1864
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001865- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1866 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1867 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001868
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001869- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1870 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1871 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001872
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001873- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001874
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001875- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1876 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001877
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001878- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1879 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1880
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001881- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1882
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001883- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001884 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001885
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001886- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001887 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001888
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001889- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1890
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001891- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1892 on cygwin and mingw32.
1893
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001894- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1895
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001896- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1897 module.
1898
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001899- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1900 installation scheme for all platforms.
1901
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001902- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001903 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001904
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001905- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1906 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1907 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1908
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001909- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1910 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1911 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1912
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001913- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1914
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001915- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1916
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001917- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1918 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1919
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001920- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1921 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1922 type pattern with the same value exists.
1923
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001924- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1925 when run from the command prompt).
1926
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001927- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1928 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1929
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001930- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1931 default sort).
1932
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001933- Added global runctx function to profile module
1934
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001935- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1936
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001937- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1938
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001939- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1940
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001941- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001942 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1943 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1944 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1945 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1946 accordingly.
1947
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001948- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1949 decoding standards.
1950
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001951- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1952 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1953 called for all requests.
1954
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001955- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1956 they are passed to the compiler.
1957
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001958- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1959 indent, width and depth.
1960
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001961- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1962 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1963
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001964- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1965 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1966
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001967- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1968
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001969- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1970
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001971- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1972
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001973- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1974 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1975
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001976- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001977 for better performance.
1978
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001979- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001980
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001981- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1982 a string).
1983
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001984- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1985
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001986- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1987
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001988- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1989
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001990- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1991
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001992- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1993 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1994 list of fieldnames.
1995
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001996- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1997 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1998
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001999- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2000
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002001- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2002 empty lists.
2003
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002004- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2005 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2006 and shelves.
2007
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002008- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2009 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2010
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002011- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002012 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2013 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002014
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002015- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2016 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002017 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002018
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002019- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002020 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2021 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2022
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002023- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2024 and removed in Py2.4.
2025
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002026- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2027
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002028- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2029
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002030Tools/Demos
2031-----------
2032
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002033- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2034 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2035
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002036- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2037
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002038- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2039 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2040 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2041 destination in situations where both files are given.
2042
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002043- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2044 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2045 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2046 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2047
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002048- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2049
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002050- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2051 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2052 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2053 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2054 now.
2055
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002056- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2057 in effect
2058
2059- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2060 C-c C-h
2061
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002062- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2063 -d option was given.
2064
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002065Build
2066-----
2067
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002068- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2069 build under OS X.
2070
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002071- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2072 --enable-profiling.
2073
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002074- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2075 is configured --with-tsc.
2076
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002077- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2078 on AMD64.
2079
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002080- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2081 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2082
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002083- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2084 removed.
2085
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002086- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2087 supported (see PEP 11).
2088
2089- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2090
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002091- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2092
2093- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2094 (see PEP 11).
2095
2096- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2097 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2098
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002099C API
2100-----
2101
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002102- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2103 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2104 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2105
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002106- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2107 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2108 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2109 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2110
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002111- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2112 generator objects.
2113
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002114- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2115 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002116 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2117 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002118
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002119- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2120 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2121
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002122- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2123 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2124 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2125 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2126 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2127
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002128- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2129 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2130 about 10% faster.
2131
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002132- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2133 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2134
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002135- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2136 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2137 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2138 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2139
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002140Windows
2141-------
2142
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002143- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2144 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2145 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2146 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2147
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002148- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2149 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2150 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2151
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002152
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002153What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2154===============================
2155
2156*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2157
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002158IDLE
2159----
2160
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002161- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2162 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2163 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2164 context-menu actions.
2165
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002166- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2167 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2168 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2169 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2170 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2171 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2172 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2173 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2174 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2175
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002176
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002177What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2178=============================================
2179
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002180*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002181
2182Core and builtins
2183-----------------
2184
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002185- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002186 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002187 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2188
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002189Extension modules
2190-----------------
2191
2192- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2193 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2194 than once. This has been fixed.
2195
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002196- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2197 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2198 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2199 call.
2200
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002201- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2202
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002203Library
2204-------
2205
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002206- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2207 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2208
2209- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2210 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2211 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2212 restored.
2213
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002214IDLE
2215----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002216
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002217- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002218
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002219Build
2220-----
2221
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002222- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2223 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2224
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002225C API
2226-----
2227
2228Windows
2229-------
2230
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002231- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2232 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2233
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002234- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2235
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002236Mac
2237---
2238
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002239- Various fixes to pimp.
2240
2241- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2242
2243- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2244 more problems than it solves.
2245
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002246
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002247What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2248=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002249
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002250*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2251
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002252Core and builtins
2253-----------------
2254
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002255- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2256 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2257
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002258- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2259 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002260 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002261
2262- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2263 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2264 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002265 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002266
2267- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2268 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002269
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002270- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2271 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2272 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2273
2274- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002275 770247.
2276
2277- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002278
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002279Extension modules
2280-----------------
2281
2282- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2283 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2284
2285- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2286
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002287- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2288
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002289- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2290 contained within the _strptime module.
2291
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002292- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2293 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2294
2295- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002296 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2297
2298- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2299 the find_class attribute, if present.
2300
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002301- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002302
2303 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2304 (SF bug 763298).
2305
2306 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002307 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2308 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2309 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002310
2311 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2312
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002313Library
2314-------
2315
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002316- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2317
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002318- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2319 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2320 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2321 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2322 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2323 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2324 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2325 or Tester().
2326
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002327- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2328 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2329 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2330 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2331 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2332 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2333 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2334 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2335 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002336
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002337 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002338
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002339- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2340 weren't before was an oversight.
2341
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002342- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2343 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2344
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002345- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2346 when there are no lines.
2347
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002348- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2349 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2350
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002351- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2352 to child processes.
2353
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002354- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2355
2356- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2357
2358- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2359 xmlrpclib.
2360
2361- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2362 responses.
2363
2364- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2365 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2366
2367- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2368 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2369 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2370
2371- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2372 used as patterns.
2373
2374- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2375 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2376 than Tk 8.3.
2377
2378- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2379
2380- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002381
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002382Tools/Demos
2383-----------
2384
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002385- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2386
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002387- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2388
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002389- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002390
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002391Build
2392-----
2393
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002394- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2395
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002396- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2397
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002398- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2399 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002400
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002401- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2402 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2403 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002404
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002405C API
2406-----
2407
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002408- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2409 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2410
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002411Windows
2412-------
2413
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002414- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2415 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2416 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2417 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2418 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2419 Python exception ::
2420
2421 thread.error: can't start new thread
2422
2423 is raised now.
2424
2425- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2426 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2427 instead of from DLL teardown.
2428
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002429Mac
2430---
2431
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002432- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002433 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002434 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2435 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2436 the executable in the bundle.
2437
2438- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002439
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002440- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2441
2442- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2443 on Panther.
2444
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002445What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2446================================
2447
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002448*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002449
2450Core and builtins
2451-----------------
2452
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002453- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2454 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2455 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2456 with the -i option.
2457
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002458- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2459 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2460
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002461- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2462 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2463
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002464- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2465 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2466 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2467 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2468 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2469 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2470 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2471 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2472 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2473 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2474 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2475 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2476 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002477
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002478- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2479 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2480 embedded in a lambda expression.
2481
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002482- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2483 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2484 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2485 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2486 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2487
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002488- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2489 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2490 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2491
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002492- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2493 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2494
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002495- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2496 It's writable again.
2497
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002498- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2499 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2500 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002501 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002502
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002503- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2504 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2505 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2506
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002507Extension modules
2508-----------------
2509
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002510- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2511 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2512
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002513- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2514 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2515 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2516 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2517
2518- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2519 collection.
2520
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002521- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2522 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2523 unique within a single program run.
2524
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002525- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2526 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2527
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002528- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2529 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2530
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002531- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2532 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002533
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002534- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2535
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002536- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2537 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2538
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002539- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2540 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2541 for many BSD-derived systems.
2542
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002543
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002544Library
2545-------
2546
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002547- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2548 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2549 primary ones:
2550
2551 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2552 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2553 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2554
2555 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2556 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2557 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2558 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2559 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2560 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2561
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002562- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2563 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2564 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2565 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2566 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2567 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2568 argument.
2569
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002570- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2571 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2572 in the archive.
2573
2574- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2575 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2576
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002577- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2578 569574).
2579
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002580- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2581 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2582 no more.
2583
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002584- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2585 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2586 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2587 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2588 code coverage.
2589
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002590- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2591 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2592 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002593 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2594 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002595
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002596- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2597 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2598 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002599 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002600
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002601- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2602
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002603- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2604 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2605 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2606 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2607
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002608- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2609 handling.
2610
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002611- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2612 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2613
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002614- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2615 in socket.py.
2616
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002617- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2618
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002619- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2620 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2621 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2622 opener with proxy support.
2623
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002624- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2625
2626- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2627
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002628Tools/Demos
2629-----------
2630
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002631- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2632
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002633- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2634
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002635- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2636 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002637
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002638- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2639 files.
2640
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002641Build
2642-----
2643
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002644- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002645 different root directory.
2646
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002647C API
2648-----
2649
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002650- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2651 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2652 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2653 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2654 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2655 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2656 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2657 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2658 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2659 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2660
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002661- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2662 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2663 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2664 from Python.
2665
2666
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002667New platforms
2668-------------
2669
2670None this time.
2671
2672Tests
2673-----
2674
2675- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2676 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2677
2678Windows
2679-------
2680
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002681- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2682
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002683- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2684 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2685 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2686 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2687 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2688 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2689 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2690 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2691 that's what it's for.
2692
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002693Mac
2694---
2695
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002696- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2697 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2698 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2699 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002700- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2701 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2702- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002703
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002704SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2705------------------------------------
2706
2707430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2708598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2709622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2710661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2711683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2712697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2713713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2714724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2715727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2716729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2717730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2718731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2719732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2720733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2721735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2722740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2723744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2724745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2725747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2726749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2727751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2728753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2729755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2730757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2731760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2732
2733
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002734What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2735================================
2736
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002737*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002738
2739Core and builtins
2740-----------------
2741
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002742- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2743 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2744
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002745- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2746 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2747 and cannot be strings).
2748
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002749- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2750 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2751 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2752 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2753
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002754- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2755 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2756 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2757 Python itself.
2758
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002759- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2760 the referenced object, if it has one.
2761
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002762- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2763 the thread started at
2764 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2765
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002766- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2767 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2768 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2769 placed on a list index.
2770
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002771- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2772 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2773 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2774 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2775
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002776- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2777 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2778 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2779 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2780 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2781 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2782 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2783
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002784- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2785 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2786 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2787 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2788 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2789
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002790- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2791 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002792
2793- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2794 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2795 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2796 #693195.)
2797
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002798- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2799 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002800
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002801- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002802 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002803 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2804 interpreter executions, would fail.
2805
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002806- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002807 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002808 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002809
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002810Extension modules
2811-----------------
2812
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002813- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2814 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2815 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2816 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2817
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002818- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2819 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2820
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002821- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2822 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2823 and Greg Chapman.)
2824
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002825- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2826 recursively.
2827
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002828- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002829 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2830 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2831 leaks.
2832
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002833- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2834
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002835- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2836 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2837 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2838 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2839 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2840 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2841 #705836.
2842
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002843- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002844 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2845
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002846- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2847 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2848 See SF bug #692416.
2849
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002850- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2851 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2852
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002853- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2854 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2855 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002856
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002857- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002858 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2859 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2860
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002861- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2862 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2863 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2864 timeouts to work properly.
2865
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002866Library
2867-------
2868
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002869- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2870 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2871 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2872 future release.
2873
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002874- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2875 for querying platform dependent features.
2876
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002877- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002878
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002879- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2880 pickle protocol versions.
2881
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002882- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2883 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2884 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2885
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002886- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2887
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002888- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2889 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2890 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2891 modules.
2892
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002893- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2894 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2895 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2896
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002897- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2898 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2899
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002900- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2901 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2902 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2903
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002904- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002905 MS Office extensions.
2906
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002907- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2908 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2909
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002910- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2911 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2912
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002913- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2914 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2915 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2916 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2917 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2918 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2919
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002920- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2921 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2922 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002923
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002924- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2925 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2926 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2927
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002928- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2929
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002930- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2931 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2932 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2933
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002934Tools/Demos
2935-----------
2936
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002937- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2938 See the module docstring for details.
2939
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002940Build
2941-----
2942
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002943- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2944 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002945
2946C API
2947-----
2948
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002949- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2950
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002951- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2952 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2953 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2954
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002955- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2956 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002957
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002958 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2959 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2960 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002961
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002962- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002963 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2964
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002965- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2966 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2967 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002968
2969New platforms
2970-------------
2971
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002972None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002973
2974Tests
2975-----
2976
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002977- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2978 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002979
2980Windows
2981-------
2982
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002983- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2984 function.
2985
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002986- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2987 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002988
2989Mac
2990---
2991
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002992- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2993 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002994
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002995- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2996 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002997
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002998- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2999 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3000 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003001
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003002- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003003 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3004 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003005
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003006- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3007 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003008
3009
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003010What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3011=================================
3012
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003013*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003014
3015Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003016-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003017
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003018- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3019 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3020 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3021
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003022- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3023 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3024 (SF patch #664376.)
3025
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003026- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3027 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3028 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3029 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3030 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3031 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003032 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003033
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003034- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3035 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3036 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3037 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003038 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003039
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003040- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3041 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3042 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3043 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3044 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3045 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3046 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3047 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3048 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3049 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3050 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3051
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003052- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3053 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3054 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3055 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3056 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3057 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3058
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003059- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3060 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3061
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003062- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3063 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3064 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3065 case.)
3066
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003067- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3068 passed as unicode strings.
3069
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003070- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3071 See SF bug #683467.
3072
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003073- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3074 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3075
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003076- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3077
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003078- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3079
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003080- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3081 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3082 arguments.
3083
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003084- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3085 See SF bug #667147.
3086
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003087- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003088 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003089 See SF bug #676155.
3090
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003091- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003092 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003093 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3094 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3095 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3096 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3097 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3098 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003099
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003100Extension modules
3101-----------------
3102
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003103- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3104 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3105 tp_as_number pointer.
3106
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003107- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3108 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3109 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3110 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3111 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3112
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003113- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3114
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003115- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3116
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003117- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003118 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003119 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3120 patch #678531.)
3121
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003122- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3123 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3124
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003125- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3126 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3127
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003128- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3129
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003130- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3131 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3132 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3133
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003134- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3135
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003136- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3137 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3138
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003139- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003140
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003141- datetime changes:
3142
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003143 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3144
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003145 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3146 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3147 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3148 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3149 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3150 now.
3151
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003152 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003153 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3154 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003155
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003156 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003157 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003158 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3159 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3160 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3161 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003162
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003163 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3164 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3165 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003166 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3167
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003168 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3169 by a later example coded by Guido.
3170
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003171 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003172 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3173 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3174 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003175 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3176 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3177
3178 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3179 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3180 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3181 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3182 tzinfo subclass instance.
3183
3184 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3185 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3186 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3187 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3188 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3189 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3190 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3191 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003192
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003193 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3194 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3195 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3196 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3197 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003198 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3199
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003200 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003201
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003202 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3203 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3204 as a naive datetime object.
3205
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003206 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3207 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3208 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3209
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003210 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3211 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3212 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3213 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3214 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3215 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3216 comparison.
3217
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003218 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3219 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3220 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3221 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003222 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003223
3224 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003225
3226 and ::
3227
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003228 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3229
3230 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3231 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3232 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3233 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3234
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003235 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3236 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3237 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3238 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3239 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3240
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003241 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3242 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003243 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3244 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003245
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003246Library
3247-------
3248
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003249- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3250 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3251
3252- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3253 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3254 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3255 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3256 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3257 See PEP 307 for details.
3258
3259- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3260 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3261
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003262- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3263 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003264 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003265 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3266 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003267 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003268
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003269- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3270 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3271
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003272- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3273 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3274 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3275
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003276- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3277
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003278- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3279 exception.
3280
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003281- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3282 class.
3283
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003284- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3285 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3286 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3287
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003288- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3289 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3290
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003291- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003292 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3293 See SF bug #659228.
3294
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003295- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3296 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3297 See SF patch #651082.
3298
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003299- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003300
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003301- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3302 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3303
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003304- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003305 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003306
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003307- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3308 DOS paths from other platforms.
3309
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003310Tools/Demos
3311-----------
3312
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003313- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3314 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3315 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3316 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3317 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3318 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3319 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3320 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3321 example:
3322
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003323 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3324 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003325
3326 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3327
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003328
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003329Build
3330-----
3331
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003332- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3333 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3334 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003335 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3336
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003337 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3338
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003339- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3340 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3341 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3342 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3343 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3344 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3345 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3346 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3347 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3348
3349- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3350 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3351 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3352 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3353
3354- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3355 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3356
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003357C API
3358-----
3359
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003360- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3361 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003362
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003363- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3364 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3365 tp_as_number pointer.
3366
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003367- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3368 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3369 (SF #681367)
3370
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003371- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3372 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3373 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3374 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003375
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003376Tests
3377-----
3378
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003379- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003380 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3381 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3382 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3383 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3384 pydoc.)
3385
3386- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3387
3388- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003389
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003390Windows
3391-------
3392
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003393- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3394 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3395 time).
3396
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003397- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3398 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3399
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003400- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3401 release without strong cryptography.
3402
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003403- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003404 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003405
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003406- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3407 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3408
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003409Mac
3410---
3411
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003412- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3413 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003414
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003415- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3416 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3417 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003418
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003419- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3420 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003421
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003422- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3423 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3424 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3425 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003426
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003427- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003428 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3429 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3430 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003431
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003432
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003433What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003434=================================
3435
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003436*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003437
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003438Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003439--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003440
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003441- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3442
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003443- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3444 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003445 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003446 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003447 a different meaning than before.
3448
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003449- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003450 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003451 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003452
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003453- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003454 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003455 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003456
3457- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3458 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3459 and deallocation.
3460
3461- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3462 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3463
3464- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3465 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3466 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3467 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3468 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3469
3470- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3471 now detected by the garbage collector.
3472
3473- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3474 [SF bug 519621]
3475
3476- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3477 identifier.
3478
3479- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3480 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3481 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3482 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3483 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3484 [SF bug 563060]
3485
3486- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3487 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3488 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3489 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3490 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3491
3492- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3493 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3494 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3495
3496- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3497
3498- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3499 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3500 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3501 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3502 state of the slots would be lost.)
3503
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003504Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003505-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003506
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003507- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003508 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3509 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3510 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3511 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003512 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3513 Jython 2.1.
3514
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003515- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003516 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003517 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3518 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3519 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3520 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3521 these, see PEP 302.
3522
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003523- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3524 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3525 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3526
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003527- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3528 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3529 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3530
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003531- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3532 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3533 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3534
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003535- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3536 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3537 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3538 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3539 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3540 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3541 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3542 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3543 releases or implementations.
3544
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003545- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003546 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3547 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003548
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003549- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3550 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3551
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003552- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3553 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3554 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3555
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003556- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3557 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3558
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003559- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3560 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003561 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3562 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003563
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003564- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3565 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3566 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3567 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3568 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3569
3570 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3571 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3572 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3573 pattern.
3574
3575 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3576 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3577 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3578 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3579
3580 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3581 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3582 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3583 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3584 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3585 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3586
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003587- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3588 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3589 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3590 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3591 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3592 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3593 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3594 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003595
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003596- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3597 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3598 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3599 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3600 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003601 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3602 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3603 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3604 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3605 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3606 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3607 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003608
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003609- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3610 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3611
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003612- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3613 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3614 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3615 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3616 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3617 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3618 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3619 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3620 to Zack Weinberg!
3621
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003622- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3623 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3624 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3625 type. This has been fixed now.
3626
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003627- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3628 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3629 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3630
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003631- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3632 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3633 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3634 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3635 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3636 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3637 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3638 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003639 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003640
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003641- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3642 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3643 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003644
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003645- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3646 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3647 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3648 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3649 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3650 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3651 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3652 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003653 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003654 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3655 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3656
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003657- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3658 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3659 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3660 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3661 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3662 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3663 this.)
3664
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003665- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3666 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003667 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003668 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003669 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3670 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003671 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3672 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003673
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003674- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3675 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3676 currently running.
3677
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003678- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3679 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3680 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3681 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3682
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003683- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3684 as directory names.
3685
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003686- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3687 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3688
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003689- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3690 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3691
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003692- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003693 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3694 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003695
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003696- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3697 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3698 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3699 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3700 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3701
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003702- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3703 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3704 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3705 removed.
3706
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003707- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3708 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3709 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3710
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003711- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3712 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3713 to __debug__.
3714
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003715- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3716 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3717 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3718
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003719- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3720 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3721 deprecated now.
3722
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003723- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3724 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3725 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003726
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003727- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3728 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3729 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3730 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3731 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003732
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003733- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3734 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3735
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003736- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3737 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3738 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003739 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003740 is backward compatible.
3741
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003742- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3743 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3744 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3745 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3746 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3747
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003748- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3749 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3750 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3751 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3752 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3753 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003754
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003755- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3756 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3757
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003758- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3759 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3760
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003761- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3762 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3763 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3764 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3765 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3766
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003767- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3768 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3769 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3770
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003771- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003772 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3773
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003774- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3775 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3776 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003777
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003778- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3779 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3780
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003781- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3782 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3783 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3784
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003785- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3786
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003787Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003788-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003789
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003790- Added three operators to the operator module:
3791 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3792 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3793 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3794
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003795- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3796
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003797- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3798 archives.
3799
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003800- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3801 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3802 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3803
3804 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3805
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003806- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3807 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3808 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003809 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003810
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003811- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3812 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3813 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3814 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003815 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3816 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3817 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3818 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003819
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003820- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3821 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003822
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003823- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3824
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003825- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3826 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3827
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003828- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3829 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3830 supported.
3831
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003832- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3833
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003834- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3835 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003836
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003837- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3838 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3839
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003840- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3841
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003842- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3843 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3844
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003845- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3846 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3847 functions but callable type objects.
3848
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003849- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003850 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003851 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003852
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003853- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3854 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003855
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003856- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3857 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003858
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003859- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3860 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3861 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3862 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3863
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003864- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3865 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003866
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003867- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3868 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3869 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3870 and __imul__.
3871
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003872- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003873 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3874 is called.
3875
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003876- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3877 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3878 interpreter was compiled.
3879
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003880- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3881 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3882 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003883 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003884 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3885 1, not 2.
3886
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003887- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3888 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3889 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3890 limit.
3891
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003892- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3893 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3894 bug #623464.
3895
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003896- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3897 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3898 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3899 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3900
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003901Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003902-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003903
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003904- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3905
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003906- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3907 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3908 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3909 with Python 2.3a2.
3910
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003911- os.path exposes getctime.
3912
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003913- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003914 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003915 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003916 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003917 unit tests of floating point results.
3918
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003919- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3920 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3921 has been increased.
3922
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003923- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3924 executed.
3925
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003926- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3927 postinstallation script.
3928
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003929- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3930 test the current module.
3931
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003932- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003933 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3934 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3935 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3936 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3937
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003938- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003939 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003940 Ward's Optik package.
3941
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003942- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3943 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3944 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3945 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3946
3947- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3948 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003949 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003950
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003951- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3952 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3953 shelf are binary pickles.
3954
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003955- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3956 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3957
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003958- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3959 modules are iterators now.
3960
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003961- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3962 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3963 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3964 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3965 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3966 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003967
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003968- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3969 with their entity value.
3970
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003971- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3972
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003973- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3974 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003975
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003976- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3977 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003978 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003979
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003980- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3981 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3982 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3983 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3984 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3985 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3986 main():
3987
3988 import locale
3989 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3990
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003991- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3992 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3993
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003994- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3995 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3996 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3997 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3998 to the new standard.
3999
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004000- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4001 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4002 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4003 an extension to the database.
4004
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004005- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4006 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4007 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4008 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004009 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004010
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004011- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004012 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004013
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004014- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4015 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4016 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4017 bounded integers.
4018
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004019- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4020 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4021 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4022 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4023 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4024 in existence.
4025
4026 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4027 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4028 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4029 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4030 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4031 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4032
4033 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4034 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4035 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4036 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4037
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004038- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4039 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4040 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4041
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004042- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4043
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004044- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4045 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4046 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4047 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4048
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004049- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4050 argument.
4051
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004052- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4053 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4054 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4055 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4056 [SF patch 560794].
4057
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004058- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4059 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4060 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004061 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4062 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4063 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004064
4065- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4066 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004067
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004068- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4069 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4070 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4071 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004072
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004073- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4074 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4075 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4076 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4077 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4078
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004079- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004080
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004081- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4082
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004083- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4084 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4085 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4086 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4087 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4088 identical to None.
4089
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004090- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4091 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4092 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4093 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4094 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4095 results now.
4096
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004097- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4098 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4099
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004100- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4101 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4102 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4103 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4104 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4105 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4106 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4107 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4108
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004109- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4110
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004111- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4112 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4113
4114- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4115 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4116 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4117 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4118 and other systems.
4119
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004120- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4121 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4122 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4123 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 +00004124 work well with these.
4125
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004126- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4127
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004128- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004129 connections.
4130
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004131- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4132 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4133 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4134
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004135- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4136 sets
4137
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004138- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4139 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4140 name.
4141
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004142- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4143 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4144 passed in.
4145
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004146- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004147 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004148 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4149 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004150
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004151- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4152
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004153- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4154
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004155- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4156 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4157 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4158
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004159- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4160 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4161 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4162 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004163 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004164
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004165- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004166 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004167 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004168
4169- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4170 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4171 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4172
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004173- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004174 the value of its expression argument.
4175
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004176- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4177 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4178 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4179
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004180- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4181 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4182 skipstone browser was included.
4183
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004184- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4185 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4186
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004187Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004188-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004189
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004190- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4191 names in addition to accepting file names.
4192
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004193- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4194 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4195 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4196 still used and useful.)
4197
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004198- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4199 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4200 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4201 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004202
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004203- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4204 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4205 the generated binary.
4206
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004207Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004208-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004209
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004210- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4211
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004212- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4213 except in the hands of experts.
4214
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004215- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004216 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4217 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4218 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004219
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004220- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4221 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4222 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4223 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4224 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4225 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4226 builds.
4227
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004228- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4229 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4230 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4231 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4232 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4233 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4234 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4235 new type.
4236
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004237- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004238
4239 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4240 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4241 positive infinities.
4242
4243 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4244 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4245 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4246 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4247 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4248 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4249 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4250
4251 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4252
4253 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4254
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004255- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4256 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4257 size of the executable.
4258
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004259- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4260 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4261 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4262 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004263
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004264- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4265
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004266- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4267 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4268 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004269
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004270- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4271 well as Unix.
4272
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004273- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4274 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4275 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4276 modules in the README file for details.
4277
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004278C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004279-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004280
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004281- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4282 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004283 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004284 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004285 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004286
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004287- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4288 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4289 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4290 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4291 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4292 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004293 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004294 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4295 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4296 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4297 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4298 aligned.)
4299
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004300- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4301 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4302 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4303
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004304- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4305 level.
4306
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004307- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4308 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4309 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4310 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4311 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4312
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004313- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4314 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4315 code.
4316
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004317- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4318 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4319 adjusting for negative indices.
4320
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004321- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4322 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4323 object.
4324
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004325- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4326 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4327 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4328
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004329- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4330 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004331
4332- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4333
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004334- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4335 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4336 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4337 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4338
4339- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4340
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004341- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004342
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004343- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004344 without going through the buffer API.
4345
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004346- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004347
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004348- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4349 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4350 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4351 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4352
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004353- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4354 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4355
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004356- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004357 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4358
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004359New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004360-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004361
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004362- OpenVMS is now supported.
4363
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004364- AtheOS is now supported.
4365
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004366- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4367
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004368- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4369
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004370Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004371-----
4372
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004373- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4374 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4375 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004376
4377Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004378-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004379
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004380- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4381 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4382 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4383 bugs.
4384 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004385 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004386 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4387 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004388 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004389
4390- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004391 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004392
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004393- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4394 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4395
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004396- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4397 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004398 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004399 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4400
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004401- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4402 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4403 use files" uninstall option).
4404
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004405- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4406
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004407- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4408 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4409
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004410- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4411 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4412 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4413
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004414- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4415 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4416 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4417 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4418 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004419 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4420 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4421 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004422
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004423- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004424 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004425 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4426 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4427 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4428 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4429 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4430 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4431 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4432 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4433 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4434 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4435 work around.
4436
4437- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4438 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4439 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4440 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4441 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4442 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4443 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4444 specified with O_CREAT too).
4445
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004446Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004447----
4448
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004449- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004450
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004451- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4452 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4453 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4454
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004455- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4456 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4457 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4458
4459- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4460 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4461 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4462 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4463 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4464 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4465 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4466 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004467
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004468- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4469 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4470 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004471
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004472- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4473 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4474 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4475 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4476 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004477
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004478- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4479 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4480 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004481
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004482- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4483 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004484
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004485- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4486 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4487 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4488 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4489 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004490
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004491- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4492 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4493 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4494
4495- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4496 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4497 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004498
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004499- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4500 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4501 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4502 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004503 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004504
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004505- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4506 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004507
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004508- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4509 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004510
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004511- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004512 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004513 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4514 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004515
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004516
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004517What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004518===============================
4519
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004520*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4521
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004522Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004523--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004524
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004525- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4526 with a custom metaclass.
4527
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004528Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004529-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004530
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004531- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4532 are proxies.
4533
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004534Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004535-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004536
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004537- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4538 very short strings.
4539
4540- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4541 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4542 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4543 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4544 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4545
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004546Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004547-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004548
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004549- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4550 close or delete time).
4551
4552- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4553 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4554
4555- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4556
4557- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004558 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004559
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004560Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004561-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004562
4563Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004564-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004565
4566C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004567-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004568
4569New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004570-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004571
4572Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004573-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004574
4575Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004576-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004577
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004578- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4579
4580- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4581 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4582
4583- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4584 deleted at process exit time.
4585
4586- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4587 in backslash.
4588
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004589Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004590----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004591
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004592- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4593 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4594 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4595
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004596
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004597What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004598===========================
4599
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004600*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4601
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004602Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004603--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004604
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004605- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4606 been extensively updated. See
4607
4608 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4609
4610 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4611
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004612- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4613 deleted!
4614
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004615- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4616 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4617 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4618 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4619 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4620
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004621- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4622
4623 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4624 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4625
4626 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4627 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4628 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4629 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4630 supported anyway.
4631
4632 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4633 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4634
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004635- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4636 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4637 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4638 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4639 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004640
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004641- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4642 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4643 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4644
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004645Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004646-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004647
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004648- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4649 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4650 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4651 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4652 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4653 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004654 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4655 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4656 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4657 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004658
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004659- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4660 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4661 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4662
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004663Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004664-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004665
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004666- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4667
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004668Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004669-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004670
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004671- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4672 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4673 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4674 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4675 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4676 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4677
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004678- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4679
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004680- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4681
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004682- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4683
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004684- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4685 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4686 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4687
4688- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4689
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004690Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004691-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004692
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004693- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4694 off a search on Google.
4695
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004696Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004697-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004698
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004699- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4700 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4701 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4702 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4703 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4704 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4705 other platforms should do likewise.
4706
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004707- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4708 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4709 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4710
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004711C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004712-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004713
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004714- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4715 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4716 producing key-value pairs.
4717
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004718- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004719 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004720 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4721 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4722 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4723 previously went unchallenged.
4724
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004725New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004726-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004727
4728Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004729-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004730
4731Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004732-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004733
4734Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004735----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004736
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004737- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4738 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004739
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004740- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4741 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4742 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4743 home.
4744
4745
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004746What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004747===========================
4748
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004749*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4750
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004751Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004752--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004753
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004754- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4755 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004756
4757 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004758 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004759
4760 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4761 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004762 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004763 This needs to be documented.
4764
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004765- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4766 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4767
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004768- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4769 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4770 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4771
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004772- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4773 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4774
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004775- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4776 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4777 class forbids it).
4778
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004779- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4780 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4781 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4782
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004783- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4784
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004785Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004786-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004787
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004788- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4789 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004790 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004791
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004792- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4793 (like 1 + '').
4794
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004795Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004796-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004797
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004798- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4799 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4800 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4801 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004802 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004803 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4804
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004805- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4806 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4807 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4808 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4809
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004810- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4811 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004812 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4813 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4814 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004815
4816- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4817 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004818
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004819- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4820 bytes on its input.
4821
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004822Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004823-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004824
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004825- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004826 convenience function.
4827
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004828- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4829 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4830 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004831 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4832 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4833 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4834 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4835 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4836 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004837
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004838- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4839 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4840 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4841 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4842
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004843- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4844 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4845 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4846
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004847- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4848 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4849 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4850 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4851
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004852- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4853 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004854 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004855 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4856 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4857 new -l and -e options.
4858
4859- statcache is now deprecated.
4860
4861- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4862 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004863 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004864 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4865 time properly taken into account.
4866
4867- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4868 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4869 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4870 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4871
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004872Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004873-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004874
4875Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004876-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004877
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004878- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4879 is built with libdb3 if available.
4880
4881- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4882
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004883C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004884-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004885
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004886- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4887 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4888 PySequence_Size().
4889
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004890- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4891
4892- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4893 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4894 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4895
4896- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4897 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4898
4899- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4900 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4901
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004902New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004903-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004904
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004905- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4906 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4907
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004908- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4909 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4910
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004911- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4912
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004913Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004914-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004915
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004916- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4917 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4918
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004919Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004920-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004921
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004922Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004923----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004924
4925- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4926 removed completely in the next release.
4927
4928- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4929 OSX.
4930
4931- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4932 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4933
4934- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4935
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004936
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004937What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004938===========================
4939
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004940*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4941
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004942Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004943--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004944
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004945- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004946 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004947 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004948 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4949 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004950 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4951 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004952 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4953 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004954
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004955- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4956 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4957
4958- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4959 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4960
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004961Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004962-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004963
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004964- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4965 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4966 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4967 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4968 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4969 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4970 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4971 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4972
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004973- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4974 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4975 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4976 example).
4977
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004978- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004979 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004980 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004981 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004982
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004983- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4984 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4985 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004986 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004987
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004988- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4989 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4990 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4991 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4992 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4993 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4994
4995 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4996
4997 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4998
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004999Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005000-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005001
5002- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5003
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005004- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5005
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005006- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5007 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005008
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005009- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5010 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5011 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5012 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5013 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5014 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005015 attributes.
5016
5017- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5018 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5019 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005020
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005021- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5022 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5023 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005024
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005025- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5026 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5027 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005028 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5029 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5030
5031- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5032 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005033
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005034Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005035-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005036
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005037- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5038 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5039
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005040- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5041 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5042 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5043 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5044
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005045- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5046 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5047 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5048 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5049
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005050 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5051 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5052 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5053 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5054 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5055 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5056 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5057 without losing information).
5058
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005059- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005060 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5061 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5062 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5063 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5064 module).
5065
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005066 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005067 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5068 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5069 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5070 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005071
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005072- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005073 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5074 encoding.
5075
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005076- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5077 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5078
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005079- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005080 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5081
5082- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5083 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5084 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5085 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5086
5087- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5088
5089- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5090 ON, and OFF.
5091
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005092- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5093 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5094
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005095Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005096-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005097
5098- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5099 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5100 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005101
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005102- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5103 been added: -X and -E.
5104
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005105Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005106-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005107
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005108- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5109 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5110
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005111C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005112-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005113
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005114- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5115 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5116 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5117 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5118 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5119
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005120- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5121 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5122 as long) arguments.
5123
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005124- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5125 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5126 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5127 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5128 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5129 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5130
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005131- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5132 input.
5133
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005134New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005135-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005136
5137Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005138-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005139
5140Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005141-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005142
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005143- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5144 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5145 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5146
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005147- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5148 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5149 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005150 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005151
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005152 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5153 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5154 import signal
5155 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005156
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005157 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005158 while 1:
5159 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005160 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005161 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5162 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5163 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5164 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005165
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005166
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005167What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5168===========================
5169
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005170*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5171
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005172Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005173--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005174
5175- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5176 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5177 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5178
5179- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5180 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5181 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5182 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5183 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5184 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5185 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005186
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005187- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005188 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005189 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5190 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5191 associate a docstring with a property.
5192
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005193- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5194 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5195 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5196 other built-in object types.
5197
5198- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5199 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5200 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5201 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5202 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5203
5204- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5205 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5206
5207- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5208 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005209 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005210 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5211 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5212 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5213 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5214 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5215
5216- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5217 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5218 class.
5219
5220- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5221 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5222 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5223 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5224
5225- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5226 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5227 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5228 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5229
5230- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5231 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5232
5233- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5234 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5235 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5236 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5237 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005238 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005239 with the same value as s.
5240
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005241- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5242
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005243Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005244----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005245
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005246- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5247
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005248- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5249 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5250 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5251 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5252 objects.
5253
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005254- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5255 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005256 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5257 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5258
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005259- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5260 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5261 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5262
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005263Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005264-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005265
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005266- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5267 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5268 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5269 by the instances.
5270
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005271- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5272 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5273 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5274
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005275- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5276 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5277 before the entire comparison is complete.
5278
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005279- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5280 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5281 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5282
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005283- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5284 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5285 getwriter().
5286
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005287- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5288 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5289
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005290- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005291 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5292 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5293
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005294- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5295 iterable object.
5296
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005297- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5298 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005299
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005300- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5301 authentication.
5302
5303- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5304 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005305
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005306- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005307 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5308 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5309 a sample driver.)
5310
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005311Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005312-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005313
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005314- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5315 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5316 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5317 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5318 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5319 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5320 kernel has large file support.
5321
5322- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5323 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5324 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5325 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5326 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5327
5328- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5329 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5330 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5331
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005332C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005333-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005334
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005335- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5336 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5337
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005338New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005339-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005340
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005341- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5342 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5343
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005344Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005345-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005346
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005347- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5348 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5349 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5350 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5351 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5352
5353- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5354 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5355 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5356 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5357
5358- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5359 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5360
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005361Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005362-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005363
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005364- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005365 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5366 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005367
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005368
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005369What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5370===========================
5371
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005372*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5373
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005374Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005375----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005376
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005377- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5378 big to represent as a C double.
5379
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005380- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5381 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5382 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5383 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5384 restriction).
5385
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005386- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5387 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5388 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5389 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5390 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5391
5392 >>> dir([])
5393 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5394 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5395 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5396 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5397 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5398 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5399 'reverse', 'sort']
5400
5401 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5402
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005403- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005404 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5405 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5406 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5407 OverflowError exception.
5408
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005409- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005410 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005411 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5412 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5413 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5414 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5415 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005416 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005417 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5418 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5419
5420 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5421 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5422 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5423 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005424
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005425- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005426 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5427 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5428 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5429 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5430 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5431 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5432 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5433 once it is created.
5434
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005435- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5436 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5437 (key, value) pairs.
5438
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005439- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005440 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5441 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5442
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005443- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5444 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5445 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5446 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5447 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005448
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005449- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005450 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5451 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5452
5453 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5454
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005455- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005456 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5457
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005458Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005459-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005460
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005461- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005462 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5463 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005464
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005465- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5466 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5467 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5468 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5469 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5470 in this area anymore).
5471
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005472- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5473 threading.Timer.
5474
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005475- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5476 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5477
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005478- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005479 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5480
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005481- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005482 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5483 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5484 converted to Python longs.
5485
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005486- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005487 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5488
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005489- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5490 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5491 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5492
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005493Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005494-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005495
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005496- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5497 division operators as per PEP 238.
5498
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005499Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005500-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005501
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005502- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5503 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5504 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5505 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5506
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005507C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005508-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005509
5510- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005511
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005512- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5513 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005514 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005515
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005516 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5517 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005518 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005519 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005520
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005521- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005522 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5523 module:
5524
5525 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005526
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005527 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5528 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005529
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005530 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5531 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005532
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005533 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5534
5535 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5536
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005537- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005538 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5539 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5540 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005541
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005542New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005543-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005544
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005545- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5546 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5547 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5548 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5549 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005550
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005551Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005552-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005553
5554Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005555-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005556
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005557- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5558 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5559 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5560 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005561 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5562 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5563 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5564 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5565 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005566
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005567- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005568 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5569
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005570
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005571What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5572===========================
5573
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005574*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5575
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005576Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005577-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005578
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005579- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5580 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5581
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005582- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5583 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5584 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005585
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005586- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5587 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5588 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5589 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005590
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005591- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5592
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005593- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005594
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005595Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005596-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005597
5598- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005599 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005600 the module docstring for details.
5601
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005602Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005603-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005604
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005605- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005606 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5607 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5608 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005609
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005610- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5611 Nick Mathewson.
5612
5613Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005614----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005615
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005616- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5617 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5618 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5619 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5620 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5621 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5622 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5623 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5624
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005625- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5626 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5627 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5628 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5629
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005630- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5631 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5632 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5633 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5634 come a long way).
5635
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005636- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5637 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5638 write filters for these warnings).
5639
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005640- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5641 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5642 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5643 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5644 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5645
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005646- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5647 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5648 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5649 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5650 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5651 older distribution.
5652
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005653Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005654-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005655
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005656- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5657 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005658 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005659
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005660- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5661 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5662 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5663
5664- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5665
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005666- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5667
5668- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5669
5670- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5671
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005672- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005673
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005674- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5675
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005676New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005677-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005678
5679C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005680-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005681
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005682- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5683 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5684 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5685 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5686 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5687 against buffer overruns.
5688
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005689- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005690 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5691 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005692 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5693 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5694 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5695
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005696- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5697 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5698 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5699 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5700 deprecated.
5701
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005702Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005703-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005704
5705- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5706 relevant is found.
5707
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005708
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005709What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005710===========================
5711
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005712*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5713
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005714Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005715----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005716
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005717- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5718 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5719 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5720 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5721 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5722 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5723 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5724 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005725 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005726 repaired.
5727
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005728- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005729 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005730 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5731 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5732 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5733 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5734 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5735 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5736 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5737 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5738
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005739- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5740 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5741 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5742 leading BMO character).
5743
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005744- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5745 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5746 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5747
5748 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5749 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5750 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005751
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005752 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5753 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5754 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5755 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5756 for various simple to use conversions.
5757
5758 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5759 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5760
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005761 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5762 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5763 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5764 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5765 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5766 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5767 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5768 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5769 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5770 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5771 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5772 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5773 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5774 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5775 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005776
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005777- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5778 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5779 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005780 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005781 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005782
5783 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005784 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5785 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5786 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5787 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5788 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005789 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5790 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005791
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005792 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5793 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5794 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005795 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005796
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005797- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5798 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5799 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5800 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5801 floating arithmetic,
5802
5803 x = 9007199254740992.0
5804 print long(x)
5805
5806 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5807 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5808 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5809 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5810 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5811 functions are of good quality).
5812
5813 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5814 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5815 algorithms to break.
5816
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005817- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5818 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5819 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5820 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5821 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5822 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5823 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5824 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5825 order.
5826
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005827- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5828 operation along the most common code paths.
5829
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005830- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5831 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5832
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005833- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5834 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5835 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5836 {}.update(UserDict())
5837
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005838- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5839 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5840 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5841 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5842 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5843 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5844 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5845 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5846
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005847- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005848 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005849
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005850 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005851 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5852 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005853 join() method of strings
5854 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005855 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5856 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005857 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005858 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005859
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005860- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5861 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5862
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005863- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5864 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5865
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005866- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5867 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5868 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5869 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5870
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005871- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5872 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005873 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005874 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5875 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005876
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005877- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5878
5879
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005880Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005881-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005882
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005883- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005884 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005885 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5886 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5887
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005888- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5889 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5890
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005891- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5892 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5893 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5894 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5895
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005896- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5897 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5898 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5899
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005900- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5901
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005902- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5903
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005904- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5905 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5906 that are still imported into string.py).
5907
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005908- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5909
5910- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5911 Now it does.
5912
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005913- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5914
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005915- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5916 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5917 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5918 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5919 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005920 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5921 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005922
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005923- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5924 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5925 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5926 'help(object)'.
5927
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005928Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005929-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005930
5931- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005932 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005933 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5934 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5935
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005936- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005937 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5938 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005939
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005940C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005941-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005942
5943- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5944 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005945
5946----
5947
5948**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**