blob: 5191c2519b89dcda77a843e860bd20d1cc741f4b [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
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000015- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
16 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
17 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
18 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
19 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
20
21- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
22
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000023- Speed up some Unicode operations.
24
25- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
26
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000027- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000028 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
29
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000030- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
31
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000032- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
33 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
34
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000035- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
36
37- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
38
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000039- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
40 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
41 was empty.
42
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000043- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
44 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
45
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000046- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000047 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000048
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000049- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
50 codes.
51
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000052- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
53 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
54 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
55
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000056- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
57 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
58
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000059- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000060 (fixes bug #1119418).
61
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000062- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
63
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000064- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
65 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
66
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000067- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
68 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
69 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
70
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000071- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
72
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000073- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
74 reference counts in some error exit cases.
75
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000076- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
77 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
78 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
79 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
80 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
81 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
82 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
83 realloc.
84
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000085- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
86 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
87
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000088- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
89 like their int counterparts.
90
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000091- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
92 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
93 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
94 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
95 for a longer write-up of the problem).
96
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000097- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
98 serializing floats.
99
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000100- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
101 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
102 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
103
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000104- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
105 278.
106
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000107- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
108 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
109 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
110 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000111 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000112 PyNumber_*().
113 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
114
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000115- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
116 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
117 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
118 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
119
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000120- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
121 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
122 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
123 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
124 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
125
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000126- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
127 disabled caused a crash.
128
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000129- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
130 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
131
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000132- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000133 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
134
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000135- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
136
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000137- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000138 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
139 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
140 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000141
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000142- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
143
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000144- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
145 returning None.
146
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000147- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000148 ('\') with a specific error message.
149
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000150- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
151
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000152- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
153 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
154
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000155- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000156 an ferror() call.
157
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000158- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
159 list.sort().
160
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000161- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
162 (2+3) --> (5).
163
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000164- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
165
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000166- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
167 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000168
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000169- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
170 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
171 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
172
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000173- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
174 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
175 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
176
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000177Extension Modules
178-----------------
179
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000180- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
181
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000182- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
183
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000184- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
185 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
186
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000187- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
188
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000189- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
190 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
191
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000192- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
193
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000194- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
195 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
196
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000197- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
198 returns in cStringIO.c.
199
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000200- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
201 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
202
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000203- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
204
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000205- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
206
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000207- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
208 the file system encoding.
209
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000210- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
211 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000212
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000213- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
214
215- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000216 line without newlines.
217
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000218- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
219 on Windows.
220
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000221- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000222 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
223
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000224- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
225 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
226 for large or negative values.
227
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000228- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000229 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000230
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000231- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
232
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000233- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
234 if available on the platform.
235
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000236- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
237 available on the platform.
238
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000239- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
240 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
241
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000242- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
243
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000244- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
245 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
246 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
247
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000248- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
249
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000250- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
251 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
252
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000253- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000254 file size.
255
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000256- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
257
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000258- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
259 {remove_history,replace_history}
260
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000261- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
262 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000263
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000264- stat_float_times is now True.
265
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000266- array.array objects are now picklable.
267
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000268- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
269 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
270
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000271- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
272 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
273 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
274
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000275- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
276 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000277
278Library
279-------
280
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000281- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
282 is an error in the format string.
283
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000284- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
285
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000286- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000287 "parent" argument.
288
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000289- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
290 for padding.
291
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000292- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
293 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
294
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000295- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
296 to get the correct encoding.
297
298- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
299 languages.
300
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000301- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
302
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000303- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
304
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000305- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
306
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000307- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
308 functionality.
309
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000310- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
311
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000312- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
313 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
314
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000315- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
316 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
317 match the Content-Length header.
318
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000319- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
320
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000321- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
322 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000323 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000324
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000325- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
326
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000327- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
328
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000329- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
330 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
331
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000332- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
333 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
334 Tkdnd.
335
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000336- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
337 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
338
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000339- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
340 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
341
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000342- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000343 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
344
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000345- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
346 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
347
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000348- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
349 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
350
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000351- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000352 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000353
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000354- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
355
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000356- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
357 error messages.
358
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000359- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
360
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000361- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
362 Bug #1224621.
363
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000364- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
365 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
366 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
367 terminates by raising StopIteration.
368
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000369- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
370
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000371- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
372 component of the path.
373
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000374- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
375 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
376 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
377 class at all.
378
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000379- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
380 files to PyPI.
381
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000382- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
383 them to PyPI.
384
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000385- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
386 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
387 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
388 work as expected.
389
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000390- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
391 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
392
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000393- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000394 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
395
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000396- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
397
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000398- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
399 to build.
400
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000401- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
402 symbolic links on Windows.
403
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000404- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000405 profile.py if available.
406
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000407- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
408
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000409- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
410 in LWPCookieJar.
411
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000412- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
413
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000414- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
415
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000416- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
417
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000418- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
419
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000420- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
421
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000422- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
423
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000424- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
425
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000426- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
427
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000428- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
429 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
430 be exploited in various ways.
431
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000432- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
433
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000434- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
435
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000436- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
437
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000438- Enhancements to the csv module:
439
440 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000441 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000442 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000443 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
444 reporting.
445 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
446 dictates.
447 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000448 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000449 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000450 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
451 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000452 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
453 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000454 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000455 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
456 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
457 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
458 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
459 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
460 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
461 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
462 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
463 without first creating a dialect class.
464 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
465 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
466 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000467 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000468 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
469 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000470 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
471 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
472 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
473 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000474 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
475 This has been fixed.
476
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000477- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
478 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
479 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
480 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
481
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000482- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
483
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000484- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
485 (Bug #951915).
486
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000487- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
488 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
489 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000490 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000491
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000492- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
493
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000494- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
495 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
496
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000497- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
498
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000499- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
500
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000501- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
502
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000503- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
504
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000505- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
506
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000507- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
508 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
509 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
510
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000511- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000512 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000513
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000514- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
515 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
516 tokenizer with very long source lines.
517
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000518- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
519 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
520
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000521- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
522 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000523
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000524- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
525 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
526
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000527- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
528 correctly.
529
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000530- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
531 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
532 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
533 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
534 between two lines.
535
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000536- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
537 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
538 handlers.
539
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000540- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000541 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
542 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000543
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000544- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
545 considering it exactly like a '*'.
546
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000547- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
548 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000549
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000550Build
551-----
552
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000553- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
554 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
555
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000556- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
557 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
558
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000559- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
560 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
561 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000562 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000563
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000564- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
565 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
566 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
567
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000568- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
569
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000570- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
571 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
572
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000573- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
574 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
575 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
576 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
577 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
578 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
579 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
580 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
581
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000582- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
583 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
584 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
585 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
586
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000587
588C API
589-----
590
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000591- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
592
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000593- Removed PyRange_New().
594
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000595- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
596 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
597 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
598 mappings.
599
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000600
601Tests
602-----
603
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000604- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000605
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000606
607Documentation
608-------------
609
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000610- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
611
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000612- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
613
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000614- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
615
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000616- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
617
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000618- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
619
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000620- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
621
622- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
623
624- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
625
626- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
627
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000628- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
629 Closes bug #1166582.
630
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000631- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
632 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
633 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
634
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000635Mac
636---
637
638
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000639New platforms
640-------------
641
642- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
643
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000644
645Tools/Demos
646-----------
647
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000648- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
649 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
650 source files that need an encoding declaration.
651 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
652
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000653- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
654
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000655- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000656
657
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000658What's New in Python 2.4 final?
659===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000660
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000661*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000662
663Core and builtins
664-----------------
665
666- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
667 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
668 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
669
670
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000671What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
672==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000673
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000674*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000675
676Core and builtins
677-----------------
678
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000679- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
680 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
681 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
682
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000683
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000684Library
685-------
686
687- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
688 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
689 raised is re-raised.
690
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000691- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
692 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
693
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000694- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
695 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
696 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
697 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
698 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
699 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
700 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
701 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
702 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
703 by the slice are recomputed now.
704
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000705- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000706
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000707Build
708-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000709
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000710- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
711 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
712 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000713
714C API
715-----
716
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000717- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
718
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000719
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000720What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
721================================
722
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000723*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000724
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000725License
726-------
727
728The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
729is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
730changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
731Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
732intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
733durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
734the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
735License::
736
737 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
738
739says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
740to Python 2.1.1.
741
742The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
743License Version 2.
744
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000745Core and builtins
746-----------------
747
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000748- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
749 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
750 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
751 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
752 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
753 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
754 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
755 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
756 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
757 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
758
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000759- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000760
761Extension Modules
762-----------------
763
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000764- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
765 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
766 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
767 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000768
769Library
770-------
771
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000772- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
773 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
774 returned.
775
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000776- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
777
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000778- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
779 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
780
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000781- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
782
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000783- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
784 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000785
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000786- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
787
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000788- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
789
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000790- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000791 the source code is updated and reloaded.
792
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000793Build
794-----
795
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000796- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000797
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000798What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
799================================
800
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000801*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000802
803Core and builtins
804-----------------
805
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000806- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000807 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
808
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000809- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
810 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
811 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
812 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
813
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000814- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
815 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
816
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000817- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
818 constant.
819
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000820- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
821 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
822 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
823 large), and to anomalies such as
824 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
825 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
826 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
827 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000828
829Extension modules
830-----------------
831
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000832- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
833 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000834 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
835 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
836 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000837
838Library
839-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000840
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000841- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000842 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000843 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
844 --swig-cpp.
845
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000846- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
847 it is set.
848
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000849- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000850
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000851- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
852 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
853 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
854 Closes bug #1039270.
855
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000856- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000857
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000858 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000859 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
860 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
861 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
862 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
863 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
864 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
865 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
866 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
867 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
868 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
869 + Updates to documentation.
870
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000871- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
872 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
873 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
874 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
875
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000876- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000877
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000878- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
879 applications should use the getmember function.
880
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000881- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
882
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000883- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
884 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
885 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
886 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
887 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
888 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
889 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
890 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
891 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
892
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000893- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
894 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000895 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000896
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000897- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
898 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
899 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
900 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
901 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
902 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
903 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
904 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000905
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000906- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
907 the new public features (of which there are many).
908
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000909- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000910 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
911 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
912 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
913 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000914 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000915
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000916- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
917
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000918- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
919 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
920 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
921 options.
922
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000923- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
924 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
925 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
926 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
927 conditions under which non-string values work.
928
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000929Build
930-----
931
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000932- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
933 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
934 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
935
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000936- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
937 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
938 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
939 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
940 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000941
942C API
943-----
944
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000945- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
946 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
947
948- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
949
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000950- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
951 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
952 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
953 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
954 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
955 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
956 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
957 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
958 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
959
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000960- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
961
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000962- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
963 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
964 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000965
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000966Tests
967-----
968
969- test__locale ported to unittest
970
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000971Mac
972---
973
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000974- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
975 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
976 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000977
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000978Tools/Demos
979-----------
980
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000981- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
982 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
983 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
984 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
985 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000986
987
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000988What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
989=================================
990
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000991*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000992
993Core and builtins
994-----------------
995
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000996- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000997 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
998
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000999- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1000 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1001 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1002 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1003 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1004 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1005 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1006 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001007 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1008 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1009 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1010 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1011 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001012
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001013- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1014 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1015 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1016 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1017 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1018
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001019- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1020
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001021- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1022 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1023
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001024- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1025 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1026 modified the list.
1027
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001028- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1029 functions is now writable.
1030
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001031- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1032 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1033 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1034 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1035
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001036- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1037 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1038 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1039 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1040 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001041
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001042- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1043 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1044
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001045Extension modules
1046-----------------
1047
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001048- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1049
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001050- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1051 data.
1052
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001053- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1054 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1055 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1056 supposed to have been truncated away.
1057
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001058- Added socket.socketpair().
1059
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001060- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1061 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1062
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001063- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001064 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1065
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001066Library
1067-------
1068
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001069- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001070 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001071
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001072- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1073 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1074
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001075- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1076 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1077
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001078- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1079
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001080- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1081 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001082
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001083- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1084 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1085
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001086- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1087
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001088- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1089
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001090- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1091
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001092- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1093 Percivall.
1094
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001095- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1096 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1097
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001098- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1099 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1100 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001101 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001102
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001103- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1104 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1105 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1106 and exponent.
1107
1108- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1109
1110- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001111 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001112 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1113
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001114- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1115 to the readline module.
1116
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001117- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001118 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1119 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001120
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001121- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1122 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1123 contains symlinks.
1124
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001125- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1126 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1127
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001128- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1129 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1130 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1131
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001132- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1133 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1134 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1135 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1136 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1137 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1138 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1139 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1140 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1141 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1142 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1143 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1144 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1145
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001146- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1147
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001148Tools/Demos
1149-----------
1150
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001151- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1152 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1153
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001154- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1155
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001156Build
1157-----
1158
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001159- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1160 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1161 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1162 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1163 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1164 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1165 plans to do so.
1166
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001167- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1168 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1169
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001170- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1171 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1172
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001173- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1174 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1175
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001176- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1177 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1178
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001179- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1180 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1181
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001182C API
1183-----
1184
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001185..
1186
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001187Documentation
1188-------------
1189
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001190- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1191 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1192
1193- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1194 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1195 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001196
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001197New platforms
1198-------------
1199
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001200- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1201
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001202Tests
1203-----
1204
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001205..
1206
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001207Windows
1208-------
1209
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001210- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1211 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1212 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1213 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1214 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1215 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1216 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1217 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1218 the problem.
1219
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001220Mac
1221---
1222
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001223..
1224
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001225
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001226What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1227=================================
1228
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001229*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001230
1231Core and builtins
1232-----------------
1233
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001234- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1235 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1236 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1237 sensitive code.
1238
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001239- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001240 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001241
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001242 @staticmethod
1243 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001244
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001245 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001246
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001247- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1248 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1249 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1250 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1251 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1252 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1253 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1254 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1255 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1256 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1257 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1258
1259 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1260 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1261 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1262 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1263 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1264 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1265 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1266
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001267- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1268 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1269
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001270- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001271 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001272
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001273- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001274 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001275 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1276
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001277- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001278 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1279 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1280
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001281- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1282 types that support garbage collection.
1283
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001284- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1285
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001286- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1287 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1288 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1289 Jython.
1290
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001291- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1292
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001293- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1294 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1295
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001296- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1297 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1298 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001299
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001300- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1301 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1302 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1303
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001304Extension modules
1305-----------------
1306
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001307- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1308
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001309Library
1310-------
1311
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001312- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1313 TIS-620
1314
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001315- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1316 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1317 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1318 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1319 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1320 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1321 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1322 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1323 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1324 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1325
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001326- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1327
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001328- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1329 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1330 same as when the argument is omitted).
1331 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1332
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001333- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1334
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001335- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1336 schemes are offered.
1337
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001338- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1339
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001340- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1341 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1342 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1343
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001344- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1345
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001346- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1347 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1348
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001349- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1350 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1351 when dummy_threading is being used.
1352
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001353- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1354 from a tarfile.
1355
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001356- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001357 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001358
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001359- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1360 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1361 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1362 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1363
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001364- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1365 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1366
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001367- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1368 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1369 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1370 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1371 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1372 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1373 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1374 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1375 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1376 by some other method in progress).
1377
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001378- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1379 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1380 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001381
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001382- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1383
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001384- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1385 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1386 AM Kuchling.
1387
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001388- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1389 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1390 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1391
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001392- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1393 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1394 instead of unsigned.
1395
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001396- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001397 no longer part of the public API.
1398
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001399- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1400 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1401 string methods of the same name).
1402
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001403- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001404 SF patch 945642.
1405
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001406- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1407
1408 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1409
1410 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1411 DocTestSuites.
1412
1413- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1414 that provide thread-local data.
1415
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001416- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1417 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1418
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001419- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1420
1421- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1422 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1423 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1424
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001425- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1426
1427 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1428 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1429 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001430
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001431 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1432 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1433 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1434 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1435
1436 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1437 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1438
1439 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1440 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1441 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1442 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1443
1444 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1445 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1446 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1447 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1448 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1449
1450 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1451 wrapping help output.
1452
1453 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1454 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1455 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001456
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001457C API
1458-----
1459
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001460- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1461 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1462 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1463 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1464 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1465 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1466 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1467 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1468 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1469 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1470 its visible semantics have not changed.
1471
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001472- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1473 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1474
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001475Documentation
1476-------------
1477
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001478- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001479
1480 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001481 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001482
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001483 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001484
1485 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1486
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001487- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001488
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001489Tests
1490-----
1491
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001492- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001493 platforms that use the Makefile.
1494
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001495- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1496 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1497 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1498
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001499
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001500What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1501=================================
1502
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001503*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001504
1505Core and builtins
1506-----------------
1507
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001508- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1509 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1510 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1511 objects now (one object instead of three).
1512
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001513- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1514 Windows DLLs.
1515
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001516- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1517 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001518
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001519- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1520 a new .pyc magic.
1521
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001522- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1523 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1524 be there.
1525
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001526- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1527 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1528 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1529
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001530- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1531 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1532 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1533
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001534- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1535
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001536- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1537 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1538 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001539
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001540- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1541 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1542
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001543- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1544
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001545- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001546 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001547
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001548- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1549
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001550- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1551
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001552- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1553 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1554
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001555- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1556 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1557 Fixes bug #858016 .
1558
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001559- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1560 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1561 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1562
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001563- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1564 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1565 improves their performance (about 35%).
1566
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001567- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1568 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1569 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1570
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001571- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1572 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1573 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1574 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1575
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001576- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1577 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001578 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001579 length is not known).
1580
1581- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1582 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001583 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1584 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001585 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1586
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001587- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1588 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1589
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001590- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1591 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1592 keyword arguments.
1593
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001594- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1595 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1596 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1597
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001598- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1599 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1600 cases.
1601
1602- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1603 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1604 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1605 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1606 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1607 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1608 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1609 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1610 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1611 a release build.
1612
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001613- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1614 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1615
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001616- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001617 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001618
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001619- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1620 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1621 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1622 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1623 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1624 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1625 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1626 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1627 destroyed.
1628
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001629- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1630 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1631 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1632 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1633 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1634 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1635 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1636 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1637
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001638- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1639 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1640 character other than a space.
1641
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001642- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1643 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1644 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1645 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1646 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1647 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1648 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1649 attributes with the same name.
1650
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001651- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1652 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1653 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1654 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1655 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1656 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1657 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1658 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1659 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1660 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1661 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1662 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1663 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1664 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001665
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001666- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1667 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1668 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1669 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1670 This has been repaired.
1671
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001672- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1673
1674- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1675
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001676- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1677 over a sequence.
1678
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001679- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001680 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001681
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001682- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1683
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001684- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1685 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1686 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1687 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1688 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1689 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1690 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1691 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1692
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001693- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1694 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1695 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1696
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001697- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1698 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1699 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1700 freelist.
1701
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001702- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1703 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1704
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001705- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1706 number.
1707
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001708- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1709 a TypeError exception.
1710
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001711- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1712 820195.
1713
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001714- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1715 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1716 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1717
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001718- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001719 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1720 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001721
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001722- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1723 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1724 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1725
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001726- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1727 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001728 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001729
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001730- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001731 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1732 the first call.
1733
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001734
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001735Extension modules
1736-----------------
1737
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001738- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1739 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1740
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001741- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1742 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1743 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1744 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1745 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1746 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1747 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001748
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001749- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1750
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001751- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1752
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001753- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1754 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1755
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001756- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1757 fewer false positives.
1758
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001759- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1760 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1761
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001762- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001763 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1764
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001765- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001766 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001767 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001768 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1769 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001770
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001771- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1772 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1773 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1774 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1775
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001776- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1777 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1778 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1779 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1780 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1781 #897625.
1782
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001783- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1784 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1785
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001786- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1787 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1788 and pops on either side of the deque.
1789
1790- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1791 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1792
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001793- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1794 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1795 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1796 other functions that expect a function argument.
1797
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001798- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1799
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001800- os.getsid was added.
1801
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001802- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1803 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1804 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1805
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001806- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1807
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001808- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1809
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001810- readline.clear_history was added.
1811
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001812- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1813
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001814- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1815
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001816- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1817
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001818- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1819
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001820- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1821
1822- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1823
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001824- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1825
1826- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1827
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001828- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1829 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1830 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1831
1832- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1833 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1834 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1835 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1836 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1837 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1838 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1839
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001840- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1841 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1842 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1843 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001844
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001845- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001846 iterators from a single iterable.
1847
1848- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1849 of raising a TypeError exception.
1850
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001851- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1852 as parameter.
1853
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001854Library
1855-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001856
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001857- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1858
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001859- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1860 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1861 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001862
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001863- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1864 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1865 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001866
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001867- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001868
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001869- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1870 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001871
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001872- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1873 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1874
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001875- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1876
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001877- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001878 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001879
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001880- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001881 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001882
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001883- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1884
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001885- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1886 on cygwin and mingw32.
1887
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001888- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1889
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001890- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1891 module.
1892
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001893- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1894 installation scheme for all platforms.
1895
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001896- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001897 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001898
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001899- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1900 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1901 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1902
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001903- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1904 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1905 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1906
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001907- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1908
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001909- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1910
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001911- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1912 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1913
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001914- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1915 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1916 type pattern with the same value exists.
1917
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001918- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1919 when run from the command prompt).
1920
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001921- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1922 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1923
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001924- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1925 default sort).
1926
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001927- Added global runctx function to profile module
1928
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001929- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1930
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001931- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1932
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001933- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1934
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001935- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001936 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1937 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1938 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1939 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1940 accordingly.
1941
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001942- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1943 decoding standards.
1944
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001945- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1946 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1947 called for all requests.
1948
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001949- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1950 they are passed to the compiler.
1951
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001952- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1953 indent, width and depth.
1954
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001955- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1956 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1957
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001958- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1959 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1960
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001961- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1962
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001963- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1964
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001965- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1966
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001967- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1968 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1969
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001970- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001971 for better performance.
1972
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001973- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001974
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001975- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1976 a string).
1977
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001978- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1979
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001980- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1981
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001982- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1983
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001984- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1985
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001986- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1987 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1988 list of fieldnames.
1989
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001990- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1991 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1992
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001993- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1994
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001995- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1996 empty lists.
1997
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001998- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1999 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2000 and shelves.
2001
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002002- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2003 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2004
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002005- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002006 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2007 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002008
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002009- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2010 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002011 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002012
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002013- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002014 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2015 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2016
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002017- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2018 and removed in Py2.4.
2019
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002020- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2021
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002022- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2023
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002024Tools/Demos
2025-----------
2026
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002027- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2028 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2029
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002030- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2031
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002032- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2033 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2034 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2035 destination in situations where both files are given.
2036
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002037- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2038 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2039 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2040 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2041
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002042- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2043
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002044- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2045 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2046 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2047 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2048 now.
2049
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002050- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2051 in effect
2052
2053- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2054 C-c C-h
2055
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002056- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2057 -d option was given.
2058
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002059Build
2060-----
2061
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002062- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2063 build under OS X.
2064
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002065- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2066 --enable-profiling.
2067
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002068- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2069 is configured --with-tsc.
2070
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002071- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2072 on AMD64.
2073
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002074- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2075 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2076
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002077- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2078 removed.
2079
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002080- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2081 supported (see PEP 11).
2082
2083- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2084
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002085- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2086
2087- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2088 (see PEP 11).
2089
2090- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2091 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2092
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002093C API
2094-----
2095
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002096- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2097 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2098 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2099
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002100- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2101 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2102 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2103 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2104
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002105- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2106 generator objects.
2107
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002108- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2109 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002110 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2111 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002112
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002113- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2114 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2115
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002116- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2117 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2118 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2119 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2120 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2121
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002122- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2123 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2124 about 10% faster.
2125
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002126- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2127 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2128
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002129- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2130 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2131 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2132 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2133
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002134Windows
2135-------
2136
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002137- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2138 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2139 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2140 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2141
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002142- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2143 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2144 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2145
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002146
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002147What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2148===============================
2149
2150*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2151
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002152IDLE
2153----
2154
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002155- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2156 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2157 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2158 context-menu actions.
2159
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002160- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2161 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2162 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2163 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2164 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2165 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2166 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2167 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2168 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2169
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002170
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002171What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2172=============================================
2173
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002174*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002175
2176Core and builtins
2177-----------------
2178
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002179- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002180 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002181 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2182
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002183Extension modules
2184-----------------
2185
2186- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2187 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2188 than once. This has been fixed.
2189
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002190- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2191 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2192 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2193 call.
2194
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002195- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2196
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002197Library
2198-------
2199
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002200- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2201 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2202
2203- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2204 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2205 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2206 restored.
2207
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002208IDLE
2209----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002210
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002211- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002212
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002213Build
2214-----
2215
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002216- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2217 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2218
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002219C API
2220-----
2221
2222Windows
2223-------
2224
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002225- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2226 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2227
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002228- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2229
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002230Mac
2231---
2232
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002233- Various fixes to pimp.
2234
2235- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2236
2237- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2238 more problems than it solves.
2239
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002240
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002241What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2242=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002243
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002244*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2245
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002246Core and builtins
2247-----------------
2248
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002249- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2250 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2251
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002252- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2253 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002254 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002255
2256- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2257 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2258 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002259 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002260
2261- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2262 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002263
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002264- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2265 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2266 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2267
2268- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002269 770247.
2270
2271- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002272
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002273Extension modules
2274-----------------
2275
2276- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2277 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2278
2279- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2280
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002281- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2282
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002283- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2284 contained within the _strptime module.
2285
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002286- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2287 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2288
2289- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002290 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2291
2292- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2293 the find_class attribute, if present.
2294
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002295- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002296
2297 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2298 (SF bug 763298).
2299
2300 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002301 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2302 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2303 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002304
2305 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2306
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002307Library
2308-------
2309
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002310- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2311
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002312- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2313 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2314 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2315 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2316 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2317 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2318 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2319 or Tester().
2320
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002321- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2322 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2323 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2324 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2325 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2326 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2327 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2328 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2329 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002330
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002331 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002332
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002333- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2334 weren't before was an oversight.
2335
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002336- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2337 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2338
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002339- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2340 when there are no lines.
2341
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002342- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2343 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2344
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002345- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2346 to child processes.
2347
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002348- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2349
2350- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2351
2352- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2353 xmlrpclib.
2354
2355- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2356 responses.
2357
2358- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2359 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2360
2361- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2362 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2363 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2364
2365- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2366 used as patterns.
2367
2368- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2369 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2370 than Tk 8.3.
2371
2372- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2373
2374- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002375
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002376Tools/Demos
2377-----------
2378
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002379- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2380
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002381- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2382
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002383- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002384
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002385Build
2386-----
2387
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002388- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2389
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002390- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2391
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002392- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2393 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002394
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002395- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2396 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2397 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002398
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002399C API
2400-----
2401
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002402- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2403 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2404
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002405Windows
2406-------
2407
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002408- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2409 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2410 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2411 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2412 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2413 Python exception ::
2414
2415 thread.error: can't start new thread
2416
2417 is raised now.
2418
2419- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2420 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2421 instead of from DLL teardown.
2422
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002423Mac
2424---
2425
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002426- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002427 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002428 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2429 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2430 the executable in the bundle.
2431
2432- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002433
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002434- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2435
2436- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2437 on Panther.
2438
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002439What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2440================================
2441
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002442*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002443
2444Core and builtins
2445-----------------
2446
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002447- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2448 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2449 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2450 with the -i option.
2451
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002452- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2453 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2454
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002455- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2456 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2457
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002458- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2459 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2460 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2461 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2462 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2463 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2464 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2465 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2466 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2467 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2468 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2469 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2470 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002471
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002472- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2473 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2474 embedded in a lambda expression.
2475
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002476- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2477 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2478 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2479 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2480 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2481
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002482- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2483 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2484 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2485
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002486- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2487 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2488
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002489- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2490 It's writable again.
2491
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002492- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2493 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2494 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002495 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002496
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002497- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2498 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2499 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2500
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002501Extension modules
2502-----------------
2503
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002504- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2505 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2506
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002507- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2508 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2509 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2510 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2511
2512- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2513 collection.
2514
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002515- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2516 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2517 unique within a single program run.
2518
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002519- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2520 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2521
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002522- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2523 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2524
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002525- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2526 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002527
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002528- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2529
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002530- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2531 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2532
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002533- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2534 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2535 for many BSD-derived systems.
2536
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002537
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002538Library
2539-------
2540
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002541- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2542 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2543 primary ones:
2544
2545 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2546 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2547 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2548
2549 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2550 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2551 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2552 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2553 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2554 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2555
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002556- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2557 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2558 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2559 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2560 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2561 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2562 argument.
2563
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002564- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2565 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2566 in the archive.
2567
2568- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2569 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2570
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002571- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2572 569574).
2573
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002574- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2575 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2576 no more.
2577
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002578- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2579 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2580 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2581 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2582 code coverage.
2583
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002584- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2585 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2586 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002587 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2588 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002589
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002590- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2591 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2592 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002593 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002594
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002595- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2596
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002597- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2598 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2599 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2600 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2601
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002602- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2603 handling.
2604
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002605- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2606 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2607
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002608- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2609 in socket.py.
2610
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002611- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2612
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002613- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2614 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2615 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2616 opener with proxy support.
2617
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002618- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2619
2620- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2621
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002622Tools/Demos
2623-----------
2624
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002625- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2626
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002627- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2628
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002629- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2630 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002631
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002632- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2633 files.
2634
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002635Build
2636-----
2637
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002638- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002639 different root directory.
2640
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002641C API
2642-----
2643
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002644- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2645 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2646 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2647 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2648 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2649 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2650 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2651 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2652 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2653 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2654
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002655- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2656 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2657 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2658 from Python.
2659
2660
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002661New platforms
2662-------------
2663
2664None this time.
2665
2666Tests
2667-----
2668
2669- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2670 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2671
2672Windows
2673-------
2674
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002675- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2676
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002677- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2678 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2679 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2680 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2681 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2682 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2683 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2684 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2685 that's what it's for.
2686
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002687Mac
2688---
2689
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002690- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2691 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2692 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2693 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002694- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2695 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2696- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002697
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002698SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2699------------------------------------
2700
2701430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2702598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2703622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2704661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2705683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2706697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2707713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2708724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2709727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2710729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2711730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2712731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2713732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2714733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2715735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2716740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2717744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2718745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2719747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2720749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2721751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2722753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2723755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2724757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2725760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2726
2727
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002728What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2729================================
2730
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002731*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002732
2733Core and builtins
2734-----------------
2735
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002736- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2737 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2738
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002739- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2740 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2741 and cannot be strings).
2742
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002743- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2744 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2745 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2746 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2747
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002748- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2749 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2750 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2751 Python itself.
2752
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002753- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2754 the referenced object, if it has one.
2755
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002756- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2757 the thread started at
2758 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2759
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002760- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2761 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2762 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2763 placed on a list index.
2764
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002765- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2766 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2767 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2768 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2769
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002770- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2771 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2772 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2773 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2774 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2775 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2776 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2777
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002778- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2779 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2780 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2781 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2782 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2783
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002784- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2785 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002786
2787- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2788 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2789 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2790 #693195.)
2791
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002792- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2793 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002794
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002795- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002796 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002797 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2798 interpreter executions, would fail.
2799
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002800- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002801 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002802 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002803
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002804Extension modules
2805-----------------
2806
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002807- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2808 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2809 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2810 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2811
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002812- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2813 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2814
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002815- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2816 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2817 and Greg Chapman.)
2818
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002819- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2820 recursively.
2821
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002822- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002823 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2824 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2825 leaks.
2826
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002827- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2828
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002829- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2830 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2831 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2832 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2833 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2834 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2835 #705836.
2836
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002837- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002838 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2839
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002840- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2841 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2842 See SF bug #692416.
2843
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002844- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2845 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2846
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002847- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2848 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2849 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002850
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002851- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002852 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2853 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2854
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002855- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2856 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2857 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2858 timeouts to work properly.
2859
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002860Library
2861-------
2862
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002863- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2864 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2865 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2866 future release.
2867
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002868- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2869 for querying platform dependent features.
2870
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002871- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002872
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002873- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2874 pickle protocol versions.
2875
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002876- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2877 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2878 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2879
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002880- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2881
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002882- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2883 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2884 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2885 modules.
2886
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002887- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2888 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2889 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2890
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002891- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2892 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2893
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002894- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2895 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2896 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2897
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002898- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002899 MS Office extensions.
2900
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002901- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2902 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2903
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002904- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2905 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2906
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002907- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2908 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2909 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2910 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2911 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2912 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2913
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002914- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2915 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2916 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002917
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002918- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2919 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2920 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2921
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002922- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2923
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002924- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2925 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2926 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2927
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002928Tools/Demos
2929-----------
2930
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002931- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2932 See the module docstring for details.
2933
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002934Build
2935-----
2936
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002937- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2938 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002939
2940C API
2941-----
2942
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002943- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2944
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002945- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2946 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2947 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2948
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002949- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2950 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002951
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002952 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2953 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2954 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002955
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002956- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002957 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2958
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002959- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2960 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2961 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002962
2963New platforms
2964-------------
2965
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002966None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002967
2968Tests
2969-----
2970
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002971- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2972 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002973
2974Windows
2975-------
2976
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002977- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2978 function.
2979
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002980- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2981 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002982
2983Mac
2984---
2985
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002986- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2987 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002988
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002989- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2990 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002991
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002992- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2993 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2994 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002995
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002996- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002997 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2998 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002999
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003000- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3001 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003002
3003
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003004What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3005=================================
3006
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003007*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003008
3009Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003010-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003011
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003012- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3013 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3014 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3015
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003016- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3017 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3018 (SF patch #664376.)
3019
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003020- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3021 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3022 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3023 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3024 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3025 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003026 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003027
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003028- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3029 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3030 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3031 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003032 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003033
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003034- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3035 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3036 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3037 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3038 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3039 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3040 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3041 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3042 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3043 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3044 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3045
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003046- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3047 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3048 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3049 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3050 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3051 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3052
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003053- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3054 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3055
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003056- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3057 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3058 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3059 case.)
3060
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003061- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3062 passed as unicode strings.
3063
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003064- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3065 See SF bug #683467.
3066
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003067- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3068 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3069
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003070- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3071
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003072- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3073
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003074- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3075 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3076 arguments.
3077
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003078- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3079 See SF bug #667147.
3080
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003081- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003082 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003083 See SF bug #676155.
3084
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003085- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003086 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003087 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3088 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3089 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3090 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3091 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3092 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003093
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003094Extension modules
3095-----------------
3096
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003097- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3098 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3099 tp_as_number pointer.
3100
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003101- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3102 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3103 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3104 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3105 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3106
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003107- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3108
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003109- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3110
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003111- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003112 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003113 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3114 patch #678531.)
3115
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003116- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3117 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3118
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003119- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3120 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3121
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003122- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3123
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003124- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3125 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3126 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3127
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003128- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3129
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003130- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3131 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3132
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003133- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003134
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003135- datetime changes:
3136
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003137 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3138
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003139 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3140 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3141 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3142 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3143 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3144 now.
3145
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003146 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003147 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3148 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003149
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003150 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003151 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003152 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3153 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3154 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3155 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003156
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003157 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3158 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3159 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003160 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3161
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003162 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3163 by a later example coded by Guido.
3164
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003165 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003166 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3167 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3168 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003169 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3170 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3171
3172 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3173 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3174 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3175 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3176 tzinfo subclass instance.
3177
3178 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3179 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3180 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3181 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3182 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3183 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3184 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3185 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003186
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003187 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3188 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3189 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3190 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3191 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003192 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3193
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003194 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003195
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003196 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3197 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3198 as a naive datetime object.
3199
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003200 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3201 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3202 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3203
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003204 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3205 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3206 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3207 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3208 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3209 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3210 comparison.
3211
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003212 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3213 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3214 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3215 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003216 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003217
3218 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003219
3220 and ::
3221
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003222 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3223
3224 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3225 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3226 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3227 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3228
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003229 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3230 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3231 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3232 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3233 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3234
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003235 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3236 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003237 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3238 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003239
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003240Library
3241-------
3242
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003243- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3244 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3245
3246- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3247 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3248 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3249 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3250 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3251 See PEP 307 for details.
3252
3253- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3254 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3255
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003256- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3257 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003258 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003259 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3260 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003261 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003262
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003263- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3264 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3265
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003266- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3267 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3268 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3269
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003270- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3271
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003272- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3273 exception.
3274
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003275- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3276 class.
3277
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003278- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3279 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3280 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3281
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003282- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3283 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3284
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003285- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003286 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3287 See SF bug #659228.
3288
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003289- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3290 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3291 See SF patch #651082.
3292
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003293- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003294
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003295- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3296 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3297
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003298- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003299 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003300
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003301- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3302 DOS paths from other platforms.
3303
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003304Tools/Demos
3305-----------
3306
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003307- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3308 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3309 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3310 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3311 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3312 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3313 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3314 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3315 example:
3316
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003317 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3318 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003319
3320 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3321
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003322
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003323Build
3324-----
3325
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003326- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3327 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3328 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003329 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3330
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003331 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3332
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003333- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3334 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3335 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3336 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3337 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3338 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3339 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3340 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3341 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3342
3343- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3344 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3345 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3346 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3347
3348- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3349 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3350
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003351C API
3352-----
3353
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003354- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3355 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003356
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003357- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3358 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3359 tp_as_number pointer.
3360
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003361- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3362 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3363 (SF #681367)
3364
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003365- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3366 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3367 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3368 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003369
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003370Tests
3371-----
3372
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003373- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003374 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3375 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3376 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3377 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3378 pydoc.)
3379
3380- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3381
3382- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003383
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003384Windows
3385-------
3386
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003387- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3388 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3389 time).
3390
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003391- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3392 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3393
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003394- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3395 release without strong cryptography.
3396
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003397- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003398 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003399
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003400- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3401 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3402
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003403Mac
3404---
3405
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003406- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3407 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003408
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003409- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3410 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3411 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003412
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003413- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3414 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003415
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003416- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3417 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3418 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3419 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003420
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003421- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003422 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3423 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3424 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003425
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003426
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003427What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003428=================================
3429
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003430*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003431
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003432Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003433--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003434
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003435- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3436
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003437- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3438 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003439 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003440 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003441 a different meaning than before.
3442
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003443- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003444 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003445 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003446
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003447- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003448 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003449 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003450
3451- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3452 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3453 and deallocation.
3454
3455- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3456 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3457
3458- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3459 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3460 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3461 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3462 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3463
3464- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3465 now detected by the garbage collector.
3466
3467- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3468 [SF bug 519621]
3469
3470- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3471 identifier.
3472
3473- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3474 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3475 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3476 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3477 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3478 [SF bug 563060]
3479
3480- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3481 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3482 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3483 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3484 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3485
3486- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3487 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3488 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3489
3490- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3491
3492- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3493 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3494 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3495 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3496 state of the slots would be lost.)
3497
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003498Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003499-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003500
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003501- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003502 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3503 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3504 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3505 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003506 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3507 Jython 2.1.
3508
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003509- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003510 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003511 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3512 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3513 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3514 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3515 these, see PEP 302.
3516
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003517- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3518 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3519 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3520
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003521- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3522 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3523 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3524
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003525- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3526 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3527 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3528
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003529- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3530 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3531 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3532 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3533 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3534 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3535 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3536 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3537 releases or implementations.
3538
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003539- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003540 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3541 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003542
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003543- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3544 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3545
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003546- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3547 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3548 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3549
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003550- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3551 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3552
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003553- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3554 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003555 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3556 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003557
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003558- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3559 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3560 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3561 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3562 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3563
3564 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3565 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3566 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3567 pattern.
3568
3569 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3570 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3571 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3572 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3573
3574 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3575 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3576 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3577 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3578 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3579 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3580
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003581- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3582 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3583 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3584 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3585 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3586 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3587 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3588 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003589
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003590- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3591 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3592 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3593 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3594 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003595 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3596 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3597 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3598 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3599 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3600 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3601 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003602
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003603- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3604 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3605
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003606- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3607 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3608 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3609 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3610 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3611 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3612 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3613 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3614 to Zack Weinberg!
3615
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003616- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3617 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3618 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3619 type. This has been fixed now.
3620
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003621- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3622 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3623 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3624
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003625- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3626 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3627 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3628 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3629 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3630 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3631 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3632 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003633 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003634
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003635- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3636 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3637 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003638
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003639- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3640 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3641 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3642 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3643 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3644 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3645 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3646 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003647 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003648 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3649 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3650
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003651- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3652 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3653 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3654 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3655 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3656 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3657 this.)
3658
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003659- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3660 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003661 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003662 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003663 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3664 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003665 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3666 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003667
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003668- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3669 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3670 currently running.
3671
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003672- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3673 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3674 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3675 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3676
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003677- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3678 as directory names.
3679
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003680- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3681 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3682
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003683- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3684 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3685
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003686- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003687 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3688 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003689
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003690- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3691 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3692 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3693 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3694 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3695
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003696- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3697 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3698 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3699 removed.
3700
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003701- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3702 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3703 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3704
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003705- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3706 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3707 to __debug__.
3708
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003709- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3710 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3711 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3712
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003713- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3714 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3715 deprecated now.
3716
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003717- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3718 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3719 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003720
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003721- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3722 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3723 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3724 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3725 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003726
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003727- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3728 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3729
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003730- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3731 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3732 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003733 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003734 is backward compatible.
3735
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003736- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3737 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3738 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3739 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3740 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3741
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003742- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3743 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3744 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3745 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3746 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3747 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003748
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003749- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3750 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3751
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003752- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3753 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3754
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003755- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3756 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3757 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3758 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3759 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3760
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003761- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3762 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3763 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3764
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003765- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003766 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3767
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003768- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3769 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3770 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003771
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003772- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3773 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3774
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003775- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3776 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3777 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3778
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003779- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3780
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003781Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003782-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003783
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003784- Added three operators to the operator module:
3785 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3786 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3787 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3788
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003789- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3790
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003791- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3792 archives.
3793
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003794- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3795 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3796 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3797
3798 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3799
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003800- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3801 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3802 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003803 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003804
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003805- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3806 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3807 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3808 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003809 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3810 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3811 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3812 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003813
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003814- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3815 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003816
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003817- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3818
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003819- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3820 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3821
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003822- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3823 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3824 supported.
3825
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003826- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3827
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003828- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3829 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003830
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003831- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3832 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3833
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003834- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3835
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003836- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3837 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3838
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003839- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3840 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3841 functions but callable type objects.
3842
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003843- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003844 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003845 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003846
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003847- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3848 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003849
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003850- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3851 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003852
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003853- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3854 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3855 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3856 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3857
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003858- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3859 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003860
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003861- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3862 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3863 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3864 and __imul__.
3865
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003866- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003867 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3868 is called.
3869
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003870- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3871 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3872 interpreter was compiled.
3873
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003874- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3875 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3876 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003877 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003878 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3879 1, not 2.
3880
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003881- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3882 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3883 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3884 limit.
3885
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003886- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3887 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3888 bug #623464.
3889
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003890- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3891 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3892 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3893 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3894
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003895Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003896-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003897
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003898- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3899
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003900- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3901 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3902 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3903 with Python 2.3a2.
3904
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003905- os.path exposes getctime.
3906
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003907- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003908 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003909 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003910 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003911 unit tests of floating point results.
3912
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003913- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3914 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3915 has been increased.
3916
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003917- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3918 executed.
3919
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003920- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3921 postinstallation script.
3922
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003923- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3924 test the current module.
3925
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003926- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003927 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3928 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3929 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3930 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3931
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003932- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003933 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003934 Ward's Optik package.
3935
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003936- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3937 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3938 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3939 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3940
3941- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3942 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003943 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003944
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003945- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3946 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3947 shelf are binary pickles.
3948
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003949- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3950 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3951
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003952- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3953 modules are iterators now.
3954
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003955- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3956 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3957 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3958 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3959 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3960 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003961
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003962- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3963 with their entity value.
3964
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003965- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3966
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003967- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3968 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003969
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003970- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3971 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003972 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003973
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003974- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3975 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3976 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3977 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3978 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3979 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3980 main():
3981
3982 import locale
3983 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3984
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003985- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3986 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3987
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003988- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3989 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3990 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3991 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3992 to the new standard.
3993
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003994- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3995 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3996 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3997 an extension to the database.
3998
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003999- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4000 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4001 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4002 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004003 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004004
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004005- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004006 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004007
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004008- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4009 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4010 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4011 bounded integers.
4012
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004013- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4014 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4015 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4016 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4017 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4018 in existence.
4019
4020 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4021 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4022 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4023 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4024 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4025 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4026
4027 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4028 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4029 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4030 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4031
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004032- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4033 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4034 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4035
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004036- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4037
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004038- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4039 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4040 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4041 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4042
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004043- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4044 argument.
4045
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004046- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4047 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4048 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4049 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4050 [SF patch 560794].
4051
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004052- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4053 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4054 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004055 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4056 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4057 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004058
4059- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4060 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004061
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004062- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4063 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4064 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4065 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004066
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004067- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4068 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4069 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4070 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4071 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4072
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004073- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004074
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004075- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4076
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004077- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4078 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4079 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4080 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4081 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4082 identical to None.
4083
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004084- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4085 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4086 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4087 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4088 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4089 results now.
4090
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004091- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4092 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4093
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004094- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4095 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4096 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4097 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4098 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4099 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4100 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4101 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4102
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004103- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4104
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004105- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4106 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4107
4108- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4109 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4110 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4111 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4112 and other systems.
4113
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004114- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4115 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4116 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4117 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 +00004118 work well with these.
4119
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004120- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4121
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004122- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004123 connections.
4124
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004125- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4126 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4127 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4128
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004129- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4130 sets
4131
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004132- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4133 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4134 name.
4135
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004136- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4137 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4138 passed in.
4139
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004140- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004141 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004142 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4143 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004144
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004145- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4146
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004147- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4148
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004149- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4150 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4151 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4152
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004153- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4154 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4155 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4156 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004157 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004158
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004159- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004160 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004161 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004162
4163- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4164 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4165 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4166
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004167- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004168 the value of its expression argument.
4169
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004170- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4171 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4172 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4173
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004174- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4175 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4176 skipstone browser was included.
4177
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004178- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4179 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4180
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004181Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004182-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004183
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004184- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4185 names in addition to accepting file names.
4186
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004187- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4188 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4189 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4190 still used and useful.)
4191
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004192- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4193 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4194 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4195 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004196
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004197- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4198 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4199 the generated binary.
4200
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004201Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004202-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004203
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004204- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4205
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004206- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4207 except in the hands of experts.
4208
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004209- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004210 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4211 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4212 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004213
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004214- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4215 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4216 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4217 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4218 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4219 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4220 builds.
4221
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004222- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4223 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4224 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4225 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4226 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4227 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4228 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4229 new type.
4230
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004231- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004232
4233 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4234 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4235 positive infinities.
4236
4237 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4238 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4239 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4240 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4241 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4242 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4243 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4244
4245 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4246
4247 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4248
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004249- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4250 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4251 size of the executable.
4252
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004253- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4254 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4255 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4256 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004257
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004258- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4259
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004260- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4261 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4262 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004263
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004264- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4265 well as Unix.
4266
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004267- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4268 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4269 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4270 modules in the README file for details.
4271
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004272C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004273-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004274
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004275- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4276 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004277 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004278 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004279 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004280
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004281- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4282 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4283 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4284 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4285 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4286 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004287 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004288 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4289 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4290 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4291 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4292 aligned.)
4293
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004294- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4295 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4296 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4297
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004298- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4299 level.
4300
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004301- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4302 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4303 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4304 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4305 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4306
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004307- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4308 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4309 code.
4310
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004311- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4312 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4313 adjusting for negative indices.
4314
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004315- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4316 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4317 object.
4318
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004319- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4320 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4321 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4322
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004323- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4324 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004325
4326- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4327
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004328- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4329 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4330 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4331 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4332
4333- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4334
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004335- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004336
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004337- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004338 without going through the buffer API.
4339
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004340- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004341
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004342- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4343 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4344 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4345 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4346
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004347- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4348 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4349
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004350- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004351 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4352
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004353New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004354-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004355
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004356- OpenVMS is now supported.
4357
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004358- AtheOS is now supported.
4359
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004360- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4361
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004362- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4363
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004364Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004365-----
4366
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004367- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4368 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4369 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004370
4371Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004372-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004373
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004374- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4375 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4376 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4377 bugs.
4378 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004379 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004380 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4381 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004382 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004383
4384- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004385 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004386
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004387- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4388 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4389
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004390- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4391 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004392 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004393 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4394
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004395- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4396 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4397 use files" uninstall option).
4398
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004399- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4400
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004401- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4402 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4403
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004404- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4405 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4406 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4407
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004408- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4409 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4410 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4411 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4412 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004413 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4414 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4415 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004416
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004417- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004418 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004419 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4420 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4421 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4422 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4423 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4424 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4425 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4426 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4427 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4428 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4429 work around.
4430
4431- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4432 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4433 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4434 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4435 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4436 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4437 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4438 specified with O_CREAT too).
4439
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004440Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004441----
4442
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004443- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004444
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004445- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4446 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4447 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4448
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004449- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4450 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4451 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4452
4453- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4454 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4455 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4456 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4457 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4458 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4459 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4460 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004461
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004462- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4463 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4464 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004465
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004466- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4467 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4468 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4469 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4470 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004471
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004472- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4473 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4474 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004475
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004476- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4477 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004478
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004479- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4480 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4481 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4482 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4483 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004484
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004485- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4486 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4487 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4488
4489- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4490 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4491 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004492
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004493- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4494 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4495 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4496 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004497 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004498
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004499- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4500 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004501
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004502- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4503 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004504
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004505- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004506 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004507 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4508 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004509
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004510
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004511What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004512===============================
4513
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004514*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4515
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004516Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004517--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004518
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004519- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4520 with a custom metaclass.
4521
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004522Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004523-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004524
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004525- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4526 are proxies.
4527
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004528Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004529-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004530
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004531- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4532 very short strings.
4533
4534- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4535 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4536 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4537 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4538 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4539
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004540Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004541-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004542
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004543- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4544 close or delete time).
4545
4546- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4547 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4548
4549- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4550
4551- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004552 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004553
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004554Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004555-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004556
4557Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004558-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004559
4560C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004561-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004562
4563New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004564-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004565
4566Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004567-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004568
4569Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004570-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004571
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004572- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4573
4574- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4575 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4576
4577- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4578 deleted at process exit time.
4579
4580- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4581 in backslash.
4582
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004583Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004584----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004585
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004586- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4587 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4588 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4589
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004590
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004591What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004592===========================
4593
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004594*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4595
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004596Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004597--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004598
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004599- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4600 been extensively updated. See
4601
4602 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4603
4604 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4605
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004606- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4607 deleted!
4608
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004609- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4610 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4611 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4612 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4613 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4614
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004615- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4616
4617 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4618 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4619
4620 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4621 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4622 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4623 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4624 supported anyway.
4625
4626 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4627 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4628
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004629- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4630 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4631 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4632 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4633 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004634
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004635- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4636 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4637 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4638
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004639Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004640-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004641
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004642- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4643 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4644 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4645 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4646 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4647 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004648 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4649 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4650 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4651 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004652
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004653- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4654 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4655 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4656
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004657Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004658-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004659
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004660- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4661
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004662Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004663-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004664
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004665- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4666 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4667 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4668 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4669 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4670 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4671
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004672- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4673
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004674- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4675
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004676- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4677
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004678- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4679 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4680 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4681
4682- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4683
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004684Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004685-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004686
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004687- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4688 off a search on Google.
4689
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004690Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004691-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004692
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004693- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4694 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4695 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4696 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4697 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4698 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4699 other platforms should do likewise.
4700
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004701- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4702 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4703 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4704
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004705C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004706-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004707
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004708- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4709 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4710 producing key-value pairs.
4711
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004712- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004713 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004714 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4715 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4716 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4717 previously went unchallenged.
4718
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004719New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004720-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004721
4722Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004723-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004724
4725Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004726-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004727
4728Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004729----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004730
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004731- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4732 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004733
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004734- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4735 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4736 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4737 home.
4738
4739
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004740What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004741===========================
4742
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004743*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4744
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004745Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004746--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004747
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004748- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4749 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004750
4751 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004752 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004753
4754 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4755 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004756 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004757 This needs to be documented.
4758
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004759- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4760 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4761
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004762- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4763 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4764 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4765
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004766- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4767 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4768
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004769- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4770 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4771 class forbids it).
4772
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004773- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4774 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4775 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4776
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004777- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4778
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004779Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004780-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004781
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004782- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4783 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004784 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004785
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004786- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4787 (like 1 + '').
4788
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004789Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004790-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004791
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004792- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4793 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4794 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4795 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004796 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004797 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4798
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004799- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4800 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4801 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4802 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4803
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004804- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4805 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004806 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4807 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4808 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004809
4810- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4811 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004812
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004813- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4814 bytes on its input.
4815
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004816Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004817-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004818
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004819- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004820 convenience function.
4821
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004822- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4823 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4824 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004825 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4826 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4827 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4828 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4829 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4830 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004831
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004832- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4833 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4834 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4835 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4836
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004837- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4838 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4839 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4840
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004841- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4842 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4843 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4844 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4845
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004846- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4847 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004848 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004849 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4850 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4851 new -l and -e options.
4852
4853- statcache is now deprecated.
4854
4855- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4856 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004857 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004858 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4859 time properly taken into account.
4860
4861- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4862 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4863 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4864 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4865
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004866Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004867-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004868
4869Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004870-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004871
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004872- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4873 is built with libdb3 if available.
4874
4875- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4876
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004877C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004878-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004879
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004880- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4881 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4882 PySequence_Size().
4883
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004884- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4885
4886- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4887 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4888 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4889
4890- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4891 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4892
4893- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4894 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4895
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004896New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004897-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004898
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004899- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4900 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4901
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004902- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4903 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4904
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004905- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4906
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004907Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004908-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004909
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004910- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4911 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4912
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004913Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004914-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004915
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004916Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004917----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004918
4919- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4920 removed completely in the next release.
4921
4922- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4923 OSX.
4924
4925- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4926 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4927
4928- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4929
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004930
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004931What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004932===========================
4933
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004934*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4935
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004936Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004937--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004938
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004939- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004940 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004941 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004942 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4943 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004944 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4945 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004946 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4947 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004948
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004949- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4950 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4951
4952- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4953 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4954
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004955Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004956-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004957
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004958- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4959 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4960 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4961 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4962 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4963 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4964 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4965 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4966
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004967- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4968 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4969 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4970 example).
4971
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004972- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004973 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004974 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004975 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004976
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004977- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4978 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4979 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004980 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004981
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004982- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4983 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4984 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4985 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4986 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4987 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4988
4989 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4990
4991 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4992
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004993Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004994-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004995
4996- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4997
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004998- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4999
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005000- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5001 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005002
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005003- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5004 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5005 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5006 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5007 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5008 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005009 attributes.
5010
5011- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5012 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5013 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005014
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005015- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5016 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5017 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005018
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005019- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5020 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5021 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005022 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5023 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5024
5025- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5026 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005027
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005028Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005029-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005030
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005031- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5032 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5033
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005034- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5035 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5036 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5037 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5038
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005039- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5040 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5041 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5042 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5043
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005044 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5045 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5046 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5047 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5048 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5049 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5050 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5051 without losing information).
5052
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005053- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005054 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5055 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5056 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5057 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5058 module).
5059
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005060 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005061 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5062 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5063 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5064 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005065
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005066- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005067 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5068 encoding.
5069
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005070- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5071 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5072
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005073- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005074 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5075
5076- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5077 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5078 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5079 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5080
5081- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5082
5083- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5084 ON, and OFF.
5085
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005086- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5087 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5088
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005089Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005090-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005091
5092- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5093 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5094 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005095
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005096- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5097 been added: -X and -E.
5098
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005099Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005100-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005101
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005102- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5103 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5104
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005105C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005106-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005107
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005108- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5109 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5110 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5111 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5112 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5113
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005114- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5115 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5116 as long) arguments.
5117
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005118- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5119 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5120 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5121 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5122 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5123 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5124
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005125- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5126 input.
5127
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005128New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005129-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005130
5131Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005132-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005133
5134Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005135-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005136
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005137- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5138 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5139 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5140
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005141- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5142 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5143 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005144 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005145
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005146 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5147 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5148 import signal
5149 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005150
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005151 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005152 while 1:
5153 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005154 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005155 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5156 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5157 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5158 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005159
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005160
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005161What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5162===========================
5163
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005164*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5165
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005166Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005167--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005168
5169- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5170 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5171 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5172
5173- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5174 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5175 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5176 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5177 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5178 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5179 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005180
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005181- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005182 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005183 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5184 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5185 associate a docstring with a property.
5186
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005187- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5188 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5189 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5190 other built-in object types.
5191
5192- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5193 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5194 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5195 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5196 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5197
5198- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5199 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5200
5201- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5202 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005203 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005204 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5205 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5206 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5207 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5208 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5209
5210- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5211 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5212 class.
5213
5214- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5215 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5216 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5217 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5218
5219- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5220 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5221 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5222 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5223
5224- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5225 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5226
5227- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5228 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5229 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5230 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5231 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005232 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005233 with the same value as s.
5234
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005235- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5236
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005237Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005238----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005239
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005240- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5241
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005242- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5243 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5244 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5245 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5246 objects.
5247
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005248- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5249 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005250 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5251 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5252
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005253- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5254 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5255 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5256
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005257Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005258-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005259
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005260- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5261 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5262 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5263 by the instances.
5264
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005265- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5266 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5267 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5268
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005269- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5270 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5271 before the entire comparison is complete.
5272
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005273- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5274 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5275 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5276
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005277- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5278 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5279 getwriter().
5280
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005281- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5282 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5283
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005284- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005285 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5286 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5287
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005288- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5289 iterable object.
5290
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005291- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5292 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005293
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005294- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5295 authentication.
5296
5297- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5298 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005299
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005300- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005301 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5302 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5303 a sample driver.)
5304
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005305Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005306-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005307
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005308- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5309 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5310 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5311 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5312 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5313 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5314 kernel has large file support.
5315
5316- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5317 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5318 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5319 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5320 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5321
5322- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5323 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5324 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5325
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005326C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005327-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005328
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005329- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5330 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5331
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005332New platforms
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- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5336 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5337
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005338Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005339-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005340
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005341- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5342 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5343 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5344 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5345 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5346
5347- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5348 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5349 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5350 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5351
5352- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5353 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5354
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005355Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005356-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005357
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005358- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005359 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5360 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005361
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005362
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005363What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5364===========================
5365
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005366*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5367
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005368Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005369----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005370
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005371- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5372 big to represent as a C double.
5373
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005374- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5375 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5376 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5377 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5378 restriction).
5379
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005380- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5381 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5382 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5383 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5384 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5385
5386 >>> dir([])
5387 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5388 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5389 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5390 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5391 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5392 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5393 'reverse', 'sort']
5394
5395 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5396
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005397- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005398 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5399 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5400 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5401 OverflowError exception.
5402
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005403- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005404 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005405 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5406 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5407 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5408 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5409 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005410 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005411 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5412 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5413
5414 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5415 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5416 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5417 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005418
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005419- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005420 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5421 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5422 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5423 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5424 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5425 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5426 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5427 once it is created.
5428
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005429- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5430 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5431 (key, value) pairs.
5432
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005433- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005434 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5435 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5436
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005437- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5438 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5439 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5440 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5441 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005442
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005443- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005444 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5445 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5446
5447 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5448
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005449- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005450 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5451
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005452Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005453-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005454
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005455- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005456 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5457 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005458
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005459- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5460 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5461 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5462 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5463 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5464 in this area anymore).
5465
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005466- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5467 threading.Timer.
5468
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005469- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5470 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5471
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005472- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005473 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5474
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005475- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005476 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5477 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5478 converted to Python longs.
5479
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005480- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005481 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5482
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005483- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5484 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5485 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5486
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005487Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005488-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005489
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005490- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5491 division operators as per PEP 238.
5492
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005493Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005494-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005495
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005496- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5497 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5498 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5499 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5500
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005501C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005502-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005503
5504- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005505
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005506- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5507 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005508 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005509
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005510 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5511 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005512 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005513 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005514
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005515- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005516 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5517 module:
5518
5519 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005520
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005521 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5522 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005523
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005524 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5525 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005526
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005527 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5528
5529 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5530
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005531- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005532 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5533 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5534 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005535
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005536New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005537-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005538
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005539- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5540 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5541 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5542 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5543 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005544
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005545Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005546-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005547
5548Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005549-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005550
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005551- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5552 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5553 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5554 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005555 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5556 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5557 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5558 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5559 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005560
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005561- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005562 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5563
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005564
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005565What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5566===========================
5567
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005568*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5569
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005570Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005571-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005572
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005573- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5574 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5575
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005576- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5577 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5578 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005579
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005580- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5581 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5582 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5583 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005584
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005585- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5586
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005587- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005588
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005589Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005590-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005591
5592- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005593 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005594 the module docstring for details.
5595
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005596Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005597-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005598
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005599- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005600 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5601 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5602 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005603
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005604- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5605 Nick Mathewson.
5606
5607Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005608----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005609
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005610- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5611 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5612 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5613 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5614 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5615 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5616 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5617 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5618
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005619- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5620 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5621 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5622 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5623
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005624- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5625 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5626 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5627 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5628 come a long way).
5629
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005630- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5631 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5632 write filters for these warnings).
5633
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005634- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5635 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5636 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5637 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5638 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5639
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005640- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5641 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5642 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5643 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5644 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5645 older distribution.
5646
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005647Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005648-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005649
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005650- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5651 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005652 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005653
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005654- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5655 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5656 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5657
5658- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5659
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005660- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5661
5662- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5663
5664- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5665
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005666- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005667
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005668- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5669
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005670New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005671-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005672
5673C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005674-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005675
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005676- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5677 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5678 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5679 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5680 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5681 against buffer overruns.
5682
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005683- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005684 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5685 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005686 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5687 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5688 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5689
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005690- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5691 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5692 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5693 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5694 deprecated.
5695
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005696Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005697-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005698
5699- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5700 relevant is found.
5701
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005702
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005703What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005704===========================
5705
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005706*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5707
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005708Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005709----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005710
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005711- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5712 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5713 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5714 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5715 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5716 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5717 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5718 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005719 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005720 repaired.
5721
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005722- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005723 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005724 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5725 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5726 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5727 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5728 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5729 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5730 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5731 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5732
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005733- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5734 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5735 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5736 leading BMO character).
5737
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005738- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5739 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5740 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5741
5742 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5743 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5744 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005745
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005746 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5747 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5748 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5749 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5750 for various simple to use conversions.
5751
5752 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5753 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5754
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005755 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5756 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5757 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5758 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5759 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5760 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5761 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5762 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5763 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5764 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5765 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5766 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5767 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5768 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5769 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005770
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005771- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5772 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5773 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005774 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005775 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005776
5777 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005778 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5779 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5780 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5781 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5782 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005783 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5784 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005785
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005786 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5787 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5788 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005789 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005790
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005791- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5792 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5793 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5794 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5795 floating arithmetic,
5796
5797 x = 9007199254740992.0
5798 print long(x)
5799
5800 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5801 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5802 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5803 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5804 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5805 functions are of good quality).
5806
5807 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5808 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5809 algorithms to break.
5810
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005811- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5812 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5813 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5814 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5815 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5816 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5817 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5818 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5819 order.
5820
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005821- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5822 operation along the most common code paths.
5823
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005824- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5825 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5826
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005827- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5828 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5829 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5830 {}.update(UserDict())
5831
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005832- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5833 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5834 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5835 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5836 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5837 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5838 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5839 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5840
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005841- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005842 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005843
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005844 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005845 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5846 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005847 join() method of strings
5848 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005849 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5850 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005851 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005852 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005853
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005854- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5855 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5856
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005857- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5858 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5859
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005860- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5861 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5862 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5863 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5864
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005865- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5866 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005867 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005868 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5869 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005870
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005871- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5872
5873
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005874Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005875-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005876
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005877- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005878 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005879 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5880 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5881
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005882- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5883 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5884
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005885- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5886 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5887 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5888 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5889
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005890- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5891 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5892 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5893
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005894- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5895
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005896- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5897
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005898- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5899 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5900 that are still imported into string.py).
5901
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005902- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5903
5904- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5905 Now it does.
5906
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005907- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5908
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005909- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5910 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5911 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5912 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5913 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005914 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5915 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005916
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005917- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5918 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5919 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5920 'help(object)'.
5921
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005922Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005923-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005924
5925- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005926 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005927 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5928 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5929
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005930- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005931 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5932 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005933
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005934C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005935-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005936
5937- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5938 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005939
5940----
5941
5942**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**