blob: 36d5c454612828d2eef75fabad2d6812964d8543 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000015- SF bug #116775: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
16 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
17
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000018- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
19
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000020- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
21 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
22
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000023- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
24
25- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
26
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000027- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
28 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
29 was empty.
30
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000031- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
32 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
33
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000034- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000035 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000036
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000037- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
38 codes.
39
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000040- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
41 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
42 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
43
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000044- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
45 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
46
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000047- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000048 (fixes bug #1119418).
49
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000050- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
51
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000052- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
53 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
54
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000055- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
56 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
57 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
58
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000059- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
60
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000061- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
62 reference counts in some error exit cases.
63
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000064- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
65 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
66 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
67 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
68 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
69 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
70 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
71 realloc.
72
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000073- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
74 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
75
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000076- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
77 like their int counterparts.
78
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000079- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
80 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
81 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
82 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
83 for a longer write-up of the problem).
84
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000085- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
86 serializing floats.
87
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000088- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
89 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
90 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
91
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000092- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
93 278.
94
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000095- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
96 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
97 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
98 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +000099 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000100 PyNumber_*().
101 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
102
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000103- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
104 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
105 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
106 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
107
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000108- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
109 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
110 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
111 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
112 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
113
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000114- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
115 disabled caused a crash.
116
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000117- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
118 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
119
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000120- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000121 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
122
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000123- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
124
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000125- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000126 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
127 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
128 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000129
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000130- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
131
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000132- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
133 returning None.
134
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000135- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000136 ('\') with a specific error message.
137
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000138- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
139
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000140- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
141 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
142
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000143- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000144 an ferror() call.
145
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000146- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
147 list.sort().
148
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000149- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
150 (2+3) --> (5).
151
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000152- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
153
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000154- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
155 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000156
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000157- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
158 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
159 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
160
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000161- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
162 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
163 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
164
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000165Extension Modules
166-----------------
167
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000168- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
169 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
170
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000171- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
172
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000173- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
174 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
175
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000176- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
177 returns in cStringIO.c.
178
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000179- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
180 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
181
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000182- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
183
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000184- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
185
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000186- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
187 the file system encoding.
188
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000189- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
190 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000191
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000192- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
193
194- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000195 line without newlines.
196
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000197- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
198 on Windows.
199
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000200- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000201 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
202
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000203- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
204 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
205 for large or negative values.
206
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000207- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000208 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000209
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000210- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
211
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000212- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
213 if available on the platform.
214
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000215- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
216 available on the platform.
217
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000218- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
219 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
220
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000221- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
222
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000223- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
224 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
225 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
226
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000227- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
228
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000229- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
230 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
231
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000232- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000233 file size.
234
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000235- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
236
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000237- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
238 {remove_history,replace_history}
239
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000240- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
241 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000242
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000243- stat_float_times is now True.
244
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000245- array.array objects are now picklable.
246
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000247- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
248 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
249
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000250- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
251 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
252 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
253
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000254- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
255 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000256
257Library
258-------
259
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000260- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
261
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000262- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000263 "parent" argument.
264
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000265- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
266 for padding.
267
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000268- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
269 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
270
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000271- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
272 to get the correct encoding.
273
274- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
275 languages.
276
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000277- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
278
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000279- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
280
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000281- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
282
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000283- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
284 functionality.
285
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000286- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
287
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000288- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
289 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
290
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000291- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
292 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
293 match the Content-Length header.
294
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000295- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
296
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000297- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
298 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000299 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000300
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000301- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
302
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000303- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
304
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000305- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
306 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
307
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000308- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
309 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
310 Tkdnd.
311
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000312- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
313 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
314
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000315- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
316 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
317
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000318- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000319 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
320
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000321- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
322 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
323
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000324- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
325 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
326
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000327- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000328 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000329
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000330- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
331
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000332- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
333 error messages.
334
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000335- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
336
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000337- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
338 Bug #1224621.
339
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000340- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
341 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
342 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
343 terminates by raising StopIteration.
344
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000345- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
346
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000347- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
348 component of the path.
349
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000350- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
351 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
352 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
353 class at all.
354
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000355- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
356 files to PyPI.
357
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000358- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
359 them to PyPI.
360
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000361- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
362 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
363 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
364 work as expected.
365
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000366- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
367 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
368
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000369- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000370 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
371
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000372- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
373
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000374- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
375 to build.
376
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000377- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
378 symbolic links on Windows.
379
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000380- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000381 profile.py if available.
382
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000383- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
384
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000385- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
386 in LWPCookieJar.
387
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000388- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
389
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000390- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
391
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000392- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
393
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000394- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
395
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000396- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
397
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000398- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
399
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000400- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
401
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000402- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
403
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000404- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
405 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
406 be exploited in various ways.
407
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000408- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
409
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000410- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
411
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000412- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
413
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000414- Enhancements to the csv module:
415
416 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000417 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000418 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000419 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
420 reporting.
421 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
422 dictates.
423 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000424 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000425 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000426 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
427 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000428 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
429 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000430 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000431 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
432 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
433 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
434 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
435 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
436 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
437 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
438 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
439 without first creating a dialect class.
440 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
441 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
442 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000443 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000444 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
445 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000446 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
447 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
448 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
449 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000450 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
451 This has been fixed.
452
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000453- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
454 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
455 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
456 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
457
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000458- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
459
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000460- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
461 (Bug #951915).
462
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000463- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
464 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
465 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000466 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000467
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000468- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
469
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000470- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
471 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
472
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000473- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
474
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000475- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
476
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000477- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
478
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000479- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
480
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000481- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
482
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000483- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
484 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
485 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
486
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000487- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000488 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000489
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000490- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
491 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
492 tokenizer with very long source lines.
493
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000494- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
495 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
496
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000497- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
498 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000499
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000500- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
501 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
502
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000503- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
504 correctly.
505
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000506- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
507 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
508 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
509 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
510 between two lines.
511
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000512- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
513 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
514 handlers.
515
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000516- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000517 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
518 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000519
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000520- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
521 considering it exactly like a '*'.
522
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000523- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
524 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000525
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000526Build
527-----
528
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000529- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
530 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
531
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000532- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
533 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
534
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000535- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
536 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
537 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000538 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000539
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000540- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
541 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
542 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
543
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000544- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
545
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000546- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
547 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
548
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000549- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
550 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
551 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
552 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
553 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
554 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
555 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
556 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
557
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000558- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
559 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
560 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
561 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
562
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000563
564C API
565-----
566
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000567- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
568
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000569- Removed PyRange_New().
570
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000571- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
572 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
573 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
574 mappings.
575
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000576
577Tests
578-----
579
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000580- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000581
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000582
583Documentation
584-------------
585
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000586- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
587
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000588- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
589
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000590- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
591
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000592- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
593
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000594- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
595
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000596- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
597
598- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
599
600- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
601
602- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
603
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000604- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
605 Closes bug #1166582.
606
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000607- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
608 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
609 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
610
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000611Mac
612---
613
614
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000615New platforms
616-------------
617
618- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
619
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000620
621Tools/Demos
622-----------
623
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000624- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
625 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
626 source files that need an encoding declaration.
627 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
628
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000629- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
630
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000631- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000632
633
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000634What's New in Python 2.4 final?
635===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000636
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000637*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000638
639Core and builtins
640-----------------
641
642- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
643 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
644 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
645
646
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000647What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
648==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000649
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000650*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000651
652Core and builtins
653-----------------
654
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000655- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
656 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
657 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
658
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000659
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000660Library
661-------
662
663- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
664 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
665 raised is re-raised.
666
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000667- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
668 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
669
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000670- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
671 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
672 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
673 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
674 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
675 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
676 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
677 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
678 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
679 by the slice are recomputed now.
680
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000681- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000682
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000683Build
684-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000685
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000686- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
687 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
688 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000689
690C API
691-----
692
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000693- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
694
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000695
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000696What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
697================================
698
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000699*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000700
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000701License
702-------
703
704The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
705is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
706changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
707Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
708intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
709durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
710the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
711License::
712
713 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
714
715says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
716to Python 2.1.1.
717
718The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
719License Version 2.
720
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000721Core and builtins
722-----------------
723
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000724- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
725 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
726 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
727 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
728 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
729 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
730 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
731 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
732 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
733 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
734
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000735- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000736
737Extension Modules
738-----------------
739
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000740- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
741 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
742 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
743 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000744
745Library
746-------
747
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000748- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
749 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
750 returned.
751
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000752- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
753
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000754- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
755 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
756
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000757- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
758
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000759- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
760 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000761
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000762- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
763
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000764- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
765
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000766- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000767 the source code is updated and reloaded.
768
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000769Build
770-----
771
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000772- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000773
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000774What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
775================================
776
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000777*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000778
779Core and builtins
780-----------------
781
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000782- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000783 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
784
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000785- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
786 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
787 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
788 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
789
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000790- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
791 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
792
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000793- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
794 constant.
795
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000796- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
797 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
798 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
799 large), and to anomalies such as
800 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
801 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
802 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
803 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000804
805Extension modules
806-----------------
807
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000808- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
809 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000810 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
811 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
812 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000813
814Library
815-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000816
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000817- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000818 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000819 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
820 --swig-cpp.
821
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000822- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
823 it is set.
824
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000825- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000826
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000827- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
828 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
829 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
830 Closes bug #1039270.
831
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000832- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000833
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000834 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000835 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
836 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
837 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
838 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
839 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
840 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
841 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
842 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
843 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
844 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
845 + Updates to documentation.
846
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000847- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
848 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
849 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
850 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
851
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000852- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000853
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000854- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
855 applications should use the getmember function.
856
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000857- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
858
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000859- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
860 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
861 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
862 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
863 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
864 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
865 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
866 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
867 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
868
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000869- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
870 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000871 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000872
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000873- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
874 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
875 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
876 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
877 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
878 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
879 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
880 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000881
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000882- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
883 the new public features (of which there are many).
884
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000885- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000886 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
887 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
888 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
889 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000890 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000891
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000892- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
893
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000894- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
895 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
896 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
897 options.
898
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000899- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
900 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
901 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
902 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
903 conditions under which non-string values work.
904
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000905Build
906-----
907
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000908- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
909 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
910 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
911
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000912- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
913 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
914 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
915 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
916 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000917
918C API
919-----
920
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000921- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
922 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
923
924- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
925
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000926- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
927 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
928 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
929 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
930 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
931 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
932 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
933 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
934 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
935
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000936- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
937
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000938- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
939 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
940 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000941
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000942Tests
943-----
944
945- test__locale ported to unittest
946
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000947Mac
948---
949
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000950- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
951 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
952 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000953
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000954Tools/Demos
955-----------
956
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000957- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
958 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
959 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
960 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
961 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000962
963
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000964What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
965=================================
966
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000967*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000968
969Core and builtins
970-----------------
971
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000972- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000973 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
974
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000975- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
976 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
977 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
978 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
979 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
980 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
981 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
982 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000983 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
984 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
985 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
986 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
987 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000988
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000989- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
990 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
991 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
992 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
993 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
994
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000995- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
996
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000997- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
998 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
999
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001000- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1001 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1002 modified the list.
1003
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001004- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1005 functions is now writable.
1006
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001007- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1008 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1009 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1010 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1011
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001012- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1013 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1014 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1015 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1016 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001017
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001018- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1019 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1020
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001021Extension modules
1022-----------------
1023
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001024- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1025
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001026- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1027 data.
1028
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001029- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1030 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1031 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1032 supposed to have been truncated away.
1033
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001034- Added socket.socketpair().
1035
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001036- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1037 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1038
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001039- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001040 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1041
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001042Library
1043-------
1044
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001045- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001046 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001047
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001048- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1049 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1050
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001051- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1052 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1053
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001054- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1055
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001056- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1057 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001058
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001059- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1060 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1061
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001062- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1063
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001064- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1065
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001066- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1067
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001068- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1069 Percivall.
1070
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001071- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1072 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1073
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001074- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1075 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1076 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001077 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001078
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001079- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1080 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1081 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1082 and exponent.
1083
1084- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1085
1086- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001087 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001088 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1089
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001090- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1091 to the readline module.
1092
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001093- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001094 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1095 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001096
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001097- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1098 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1099 contains symlinks.
1100
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001101- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1102 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1103
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001104- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1105 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1106 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1107
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001108- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1109 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1110 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1111 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1112 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1113 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1114 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1115 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1116 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1117 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1118 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1119 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1120 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1121
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001122- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1123
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001124Tools/Demos
1125-----------
1126
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001127- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1128 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1129
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001130- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1131
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001132Build
1133-----
1134
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001135- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1136 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1137 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1138 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1139 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1140 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1141 plans to do so.
1142
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001143- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1144 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1145
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001146- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1147 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1148
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001149- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1150 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1151
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001152- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1153 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1154
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001155- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1156 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1157
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001158C API
1159-----
1160
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001161..
1162
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001163Documentation
1164-------------
1165
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001166- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1167 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1168
1169- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1170 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1171 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001172
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001173New platforms
1174-------------
1175
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001176- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1177
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001178Tests
1179-----
1180
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001181..
1182
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001183Windows
1184-------
1185
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001186- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1187 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1188 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1189 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1190 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1191 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1192 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1193 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1194 the problem.
1195
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001196Mac
1197---
1198
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001199..
1200
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001201
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001202What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1203=================================
1204
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001205*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001206
1207Core and builtins
1208-----------------
1209
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001210- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1211 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1212 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1213 sensitive code.
1214
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001215- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001216 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001217
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001218 @staticmethod
1219 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001220
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001221 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001222
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001223- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1224 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1225 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1226 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1227 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1228 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1229 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1230 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1231 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1232 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1233 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1234
1235 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1236 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1237 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1238 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1239 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1240 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1241 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1242
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001243- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1244 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1245
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001246- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001247 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001248
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001249- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001250 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001251 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1252
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001253- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001254 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1255 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1256
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001257- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1258 types that support garbage collection.
1259
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001260- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1261
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001262- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1263 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1264 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1265 Jython.
1266
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001267- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1268
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001269- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1270 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1271
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001272- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1273 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1274 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001275
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001276- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1277 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1278 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1279
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001280Extension modules
1281-----------------
1282
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001283- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1284
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001285Library
1286-------
1287
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001288- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1289 TIS-620
1290
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001291- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1292 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1293 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1294 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1295 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1296 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1297 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1298 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1299 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1300 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1301
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001302- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1303
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001304- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1305 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1306 same as when the argument is omitted).
1307 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1308
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001309- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1310
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001311- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1312 schemes are offered.
1313
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001314- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1315
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001316- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1317 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1318 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1319
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001320- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1321
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001322- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1323 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1324
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001325- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1326 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1327 when dummy_threading is being used.
1328
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001329- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1330 from a tarfile.
1331
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001332- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001333 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001334
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001335- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1336 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1337 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1338 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1339
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001340- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1341 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1342
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001343- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1344 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1345 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1346 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1347 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1348 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1349 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1350 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1351 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1352 by some other method in progress).
1353
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001354- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1355 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1356 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001357
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001358- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1359
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001360- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1361 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1362 AM Kuchling.
1363
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001364- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1365 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1366 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1367
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001368- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1369 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1370 instead of unsigned.
1371
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001372- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001373 no longer part of the public API.
1374
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001375- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1376 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1377 string methods of the same name).
1378
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001379- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001380 SF patch 945642.
1381
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001382- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1383
1384 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1385
1386 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1387 DocTestSuites.
1388
1389- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1390 that provide thread-local data.
1391
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001392- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1393 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1394
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001395- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1396
1397- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1398 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1399 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1400
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001401- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1402
1403 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1404 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1405 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001406
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001407 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1408 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1409 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1410 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1411
1412 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1413 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1414
1415 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1416 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1417 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1418 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1419
1420 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1421 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1422 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1423 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1424 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1425
1426 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1427 wrapping help output.
1428
1429 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1430 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1431 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001432
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001433C API
1434-----
1435
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001436- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1437 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1438 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1439 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1440 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1441 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1442 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1443 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1444 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1445 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1446 its visible semantics have not changed.
1447
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001448- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1449 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1450
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001451Documentation
1452-------------
1453
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001454- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001455
1456 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001457 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001458
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001459 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001460
1461 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1462
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001463- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001464
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001465Tests
1466-----
1467
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001468- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001469 platforms that use the Makefile.
1470
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001471- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1472 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1473 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1474
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001475
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001476What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1477=================================
1478
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001479*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001480
1481Core and builtins
1482-----------------
1483
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001484- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1485 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1486 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1487 objects now (one object instead of three).
1488
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001489- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1490 Windows DLLs.
1491
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001492- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1493 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001494
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001495- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1496 a new .pyc magic.
1497
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001498- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1499 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1500 be there.
1501
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001502- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1503 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1504 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1505
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001506- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1507 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1508 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1509
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001510- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1511
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001512- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1513 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1514 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001515
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001516- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1517 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1518
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001519- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1520
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001521- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001522 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001523
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001524- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1525
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001526- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1527
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001528- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1529 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1530
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001531- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1532 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1533 Fixes bug #858016 .
1534
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001535- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1536 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1537 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1538
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001539- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1540 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1541 improves their performance (about 35%).
1542
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001543- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1544 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1545 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1546
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001547- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1548 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1549 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1550 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1551
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001552- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1553 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001554 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001555 length is not known).
1556
1557- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1558 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001559 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1560 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001561 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1562
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001563- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1564 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1565
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001566- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1567 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1568 keyword arguments.
1569
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001570- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1571 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1572 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1573
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001574- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1575 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1576 cases.
1577
1578- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1579 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1580 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1581 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1582 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1583 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1584 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1585 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1586 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1587 a release build.
1588
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001589- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1590 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1591
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001592- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001593 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001594
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001595- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1596 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1597 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1598 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1599 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1600 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1601 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1602 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1603 destroyed.
1604
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001605- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1606 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1607 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1608 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1609 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1610 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1611 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1612 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1613
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001614- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1615 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1616 character other than a space.
1617
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001618- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1619 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1620 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1621 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1622 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1623 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1624 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1625 attributes with the same name.
1626
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001627- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1628 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1629 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1630 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1631 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1632 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1633 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1634 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1635 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1636 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1637 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1638 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1639 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1640 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001641
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001642- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1643 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1644 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1645 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1646 This has been repaired.
1647
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001648- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1649
1650- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1651
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001652- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1653 over a sequence.
1654
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001655- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001656 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001657
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001658- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1659
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001660- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1661 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1662 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1663 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1664 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1665 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1666 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1667 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1668
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001669- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1670 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1671 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1672
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001673- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1674 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1675 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1676 freelist.
1677
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001678- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1679 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1680
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001681- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1682 number.
1683
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001684- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1685 a TypeError exception.
1686
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001687- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1688 820195.
1689
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001690- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1691 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1692 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1693
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001694- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001695 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1696 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001697
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001698- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1699 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1700 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1701
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001702- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1703 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001704 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001705
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001706- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001707 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1708 the first call.
1709
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001710
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001711Extension modules
1712-----------------
1713
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001714- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1715 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1716
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001717- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1718 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1719 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1720 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1721 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1722 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1723 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001724
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001725- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1726
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001727- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1728
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001729- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1730 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1731
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001732- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1733 fewer false positives.
1734
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001735- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1736 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1737
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001738- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001739 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1740
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001741- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001742 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001743 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001744 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1745 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001746
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001747- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1748 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1749 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1750 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1751
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001752- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1753 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1754 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1755 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1756 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1757 #897625.
1758
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001759- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1760 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1761
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001762- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1763 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1764 and pops on either side of the deque.
1765
1766- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1767 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1768
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001769- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1770 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1771 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1772 other functions that expect a function argument.
1773
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001774- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1775
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001776- os.getsid was added.
1777
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001778- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1779 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1780 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1781
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001782- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1783
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001784- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1785
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001786- readline.clear_history was added.
1787
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001788- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1789
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001790- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1791
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001792- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1793
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001794- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1795
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001796- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1797
1798- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1799
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001800- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1801
1802- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1803
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001804- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1805 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1806 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1807
1808- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1809 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1810 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1811 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1812 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1813 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1814 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1815
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001816- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1817 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1818 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1819 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001820
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001821- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001822 iterators from a single iterable.
1823
1824- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1825 of raising a TypeError exception.
1826
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001827- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1828 as parameter.
1829
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001830Library
1831-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001832
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001833- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1834
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001835- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1836 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1837 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001838
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001839- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1840 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1841 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001842
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001843- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001844
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001845- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1846 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001847
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001848- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1849 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1850
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001851- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1852
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001853- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001854 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001855
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001856- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001857 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001858
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001859- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1860
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001861- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1862 on cygwin and mingw32.
1863
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001864- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1865
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001866- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1867 module.
1868
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001869- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1870 installation scheme for all platforms.
1871
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001872- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001873 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001874
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001875- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1876 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1877 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1878
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001879- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1880 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1881 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1882
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001883- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1884
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001885- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1886
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001887- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1888 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1889
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001890- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1891 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1892 type pattern with the same value exists.
1893
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001894- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1895 when run from the command prompt).
1896
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001897- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1898 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1899
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001900- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1901 default sort).
1902
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001903- Added global runctx function to profile module
1904
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001905- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1906
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001907- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1908
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001909- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1910
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001911- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001912 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1913 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1914 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1915 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1916 accordingly.
1917
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001918- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1919 decoding standards.
1920
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001921- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1922 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1923 called for all requests.
1924
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001925- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1926 they are passed to the compiler.
1927
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001928- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1929 indent, width and depth.
1930
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001931- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1932 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1933
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001934- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1935 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1936
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001937- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1938
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001939- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1940
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001941- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1942
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001943- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1944 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1945
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001946- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001947 for better performance.
1948
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001949- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001950
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001951- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1952 a string).
1953
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001954- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1955
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001956- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1957
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001958- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1959
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001960- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1961
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001962- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1963 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1964 list of fieldnames.
1965
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001966- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1967 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1968
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001969- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1970
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001971- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1972 empty lists.
1973
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001974- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1975 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1976 and shelves.
1977
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001978- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1979 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1980
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001981- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001982 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1983 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001984
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001985- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1986 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001987 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001988
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001989- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001990 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1991 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1992
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001993- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1994 and removed in Py2.4.
1995
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001996- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1997
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001998- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1999
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002000Tools/Demos
2001-----------
2002
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002003- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2004 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2005
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002006- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2007
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002008- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2009 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2010 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2011 destination in situations where both files are given.
2012
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002013- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2014 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2015 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2016 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2017
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002018- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2019
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002020- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2021 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2022 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2023 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2024 now.
2025
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002026- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2027 in effect
2028
2029- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2030 C-c C-h
2031
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002032- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2033 -d option was given.
2034
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002035Build
2036-----
2037
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002038- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2039 build under OS X.
2040
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002041- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2042 --enable-profiling.
2043
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002044- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2045 is configured --with-tsc.
2046
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002047- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2048 on AMD64.
2049
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002050- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2051 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2052
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002053- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2054 removed.
2055
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002056- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2057 supported (see PEP 11).
2058
2059- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2060
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002061- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2062
2063- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2064 (see PEP 11).
2065
2066- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2067 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2068
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002069C API
2070-----
2071
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002072- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2073 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2074 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2075
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002076- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2077 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2078 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2079 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2080
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002081- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2082 generator objects.
2083
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002084- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2085 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002086 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2087 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002088
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002089- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2090 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2091
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002092- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2093 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2094 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2095 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2096 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2097
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002098- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2099 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2100 about 10% faster.
2101
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002102- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2103 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2104
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002105- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2106 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2107 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2108 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2109
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002110Windows
2111-------
2112
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002113- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2114 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2115 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2116 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2117
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002118- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2119 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2120 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2121
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002122
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002123What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2124===============================
2125
2126*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2127
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002128IDLE
2129----
2130
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002131- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2132 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2133 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2134 context-menu actions.
2135
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002136- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2137 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2138 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2139 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2140 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2141 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2142 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2143 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2144 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2145
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002146
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002147What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2148=============================================
2149
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002150*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002151
2152Core and builtins
2153-----------------
2154
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002155- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002156 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002157 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2158
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002159Extension modules
2160-----------------
2161
2162- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2163 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2164 than once. This has been fixed.
2165
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002166- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2167 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2168 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2169 call.
2170
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002171- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2172
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002173Library
2174-------
2175
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002176- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2177 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2178
2179- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2180 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2181 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2182 restored.
2183
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002184IDLE
2185----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002186
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002187- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002188
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002189Build
2190-----
2191
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002192- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2193 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2194
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002195C API
2196-----
2197
2198Windows
2199-------
2200
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002201- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2202 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2203
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002204- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2205
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002206Mac
2207---
2208
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002209- Various fixes to pimp.
2210
2211- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2212
2213- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2214 more problems than it solves.
2215
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002216
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002217What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2218=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002219
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002220*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2221
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002222Core and builtins
2223-----------------
2224
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002225- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2226 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2227
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002228- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2229 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002230 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002231
2232- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2233 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2234 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002235 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002236
2237- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2238 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002239
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002240- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2241 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2242 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2243
2244- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002245 770247.
2246
2247- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002248
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002249Extension modules
2250-----------------
2251
2252- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2253 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2254
2255- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2256
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002257- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2258
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002259- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2260 contained within the _strptime module.
2261
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002262- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2263 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2264
2265- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002266 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2267
2268- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2269 the find_class attribute, if present.
2270
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002271- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002272
2273 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2274 (SF bug 763298).
2275
2276 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002277 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2278 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2279 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002280
2281 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2282
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002283Library
2284-------
2285
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002286- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2287
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002288- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2289 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2290 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2291 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2292 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2293 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2294 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2295 or Tester().
2296
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002297- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2298 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2299 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2300 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2301 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2302 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2303 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2304 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2305 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002306
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002307 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002308
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002309- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2310 weren't before was an oversight.
2311
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002312- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2313 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2314
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002315- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2316 when there are no lines.
2317
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002318- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2319 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2320
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002321- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2322 to child processes.
2323
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002324- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2325
2326- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2327
2328- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2329 xmlrpclib.
2330
2331- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2332 responses.
2333
2334- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2335 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2336
2337- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2338 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2339 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2340
2341- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2342 used as patterns.
2343
2344- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2345 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2346 than Tk 8.3.
2347
2348- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2349
2350- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002351
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002352Tools/Demos
2353-----------
2354
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002355- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2356
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002357- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2358
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002359- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002360
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002361Build
2362-----
2363
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002364- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2365
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002366- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2367
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002368- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2369 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002370
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002371- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2372 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2373 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002374
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002375C API
2376-----
2377
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002378- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2379 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2380
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002381Windows
2382-------
2383
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002384- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2385 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2386 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2387 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2388 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2389 Python exception ::
2390
2391 thread.error: can't start new thread
2392
2393 is raised now.
2394
2395- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2396 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2397 instead of from DLL teardown.
2398
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002399Mac
2400---
2401
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002402- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002403 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002404 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2405 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2406 the executable in the bundle.
2407
2408- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002409
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002410- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2411
2412- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2413 on Panther.
2414
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002415What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2416================================
2417
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002418*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002419
2420Core and builtins
2421-----------------
2422
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002423- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2424 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2425 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2426 with the -i option.
2427
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002428- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2429 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2430
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002431- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2432 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2433
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002434- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2435 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2436 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2437 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2438 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2439 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2440 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2441 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2442 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2443 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2444 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2445 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2446 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002447
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002448- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2449 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2450 embedded in a lambda expression.
2451
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002452- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2453 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2454 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2455 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2456 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2457
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002458- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2459 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2460 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2461
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002462- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2463 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2464
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002465- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2466 It's writable again.
2467
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002468- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2469 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2470 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002471 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002472
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002473- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2474 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2475 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2476
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002477Extension modules
2478-----------------
2479
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002480- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2481 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2482
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002483- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2484 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2485 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2486 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2487
2488- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2489 collection.
2490
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002491- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2492 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2493 unique within a single program run.
2494
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002495- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2496 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2497
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002498- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2499 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2500
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002501- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2502 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002503
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002504- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2505
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002506- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2507 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2508
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002509- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2510 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2511 for many BSD-derived systems.
2512
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002513
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002514Library
2515-------
2516
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002517- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2518 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2519 primary ones:
2520
2521 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2522 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2523 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2524
2525 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2526 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2527 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2528 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2529 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2530 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2531
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002532- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2533 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2534 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2535 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2536 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2537 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2538 argument.
2539
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002540- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2541 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2542 in the archive.
2543
2544- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2545 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2546
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002547- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2548 569574).
2549
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002550- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2551 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2552 no more.
2553
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002554- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2555 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2556 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2557 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2558 code coverage.
2559
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002560- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2561 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2562 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002563 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2564 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002565
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002566- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2567 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2568 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002569 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002570
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002571- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2572
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002573- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2574 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2575 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2576 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2577
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002578- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2579 handling.
2580
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002581- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2582 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2583
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002584- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2585 in socket.py.
2586
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002587- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2588
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002589- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2590 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2591 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2592 opener with proxy support.
2593
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002594- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2595
2596- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2597
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002598Tools/Demos
2599-----------
2600
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002601- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2602
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002603- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2604
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002605- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2606 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002607
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002608- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2609 files.
2610
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002611Build
2612-----
2613
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002614- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002615 different root directory.
2616
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002617C API
2618-----
2619
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002620- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2621 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2622 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2623 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2624 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2625 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2626 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2627 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2628 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2629 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2630
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002631- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2632 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2633 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2634 from Python.
2635
2636
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002637New platforms
2638-------------
2639
2640None this time.
2641
2642Tests
2643-----
2644
2645- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2646 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2647
2648Windows
2649-------
2650
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002651- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2652
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002653- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2654 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2655 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2656 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2657 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2658 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2659 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2660 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2661 that's what it's for.
2662
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002663Mac
2664---
2665
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002666- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2667 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2668 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2669 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002670- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2671 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2672- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002673
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002674SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2675------------------------------------
2676
2677430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2678598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2679622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2680661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2681683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2682697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2683713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2684724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2685727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2686729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2687730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2688731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2689732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2690733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2691735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2692740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2693744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2694745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2695747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2696749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2697751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2698753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2699755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2700757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2701760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2702
2703
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002704What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2705================================
2706
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002707*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002708
2709Core and builtins
2710-----------------
2711
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002712- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2713 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2714
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002715- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2716 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2717 and cannot be strings).
2718
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002719- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2720 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2721 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2722 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2723
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002724- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2725 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2726 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2727 Python itself.
2728
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002729- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2730 the referenced object, if it has one.
2731
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002732- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2733 the thread started at
2734 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2735
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002736- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2737 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2738 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2739 placed on a list index.
2740
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002741- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2742 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2743 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2744 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2745
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002746- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2747 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2748 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2749 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2750 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2751 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2752 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2753
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002754- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2755 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2756 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2757 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2758 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2759
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002760- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2761 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002762
2763- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2764 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2765 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2766 #693195.)
2767
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002768- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2769 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002770
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002771- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002772 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002773 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2774 interpreter executions, would fail.
2775
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002776- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002777 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002778 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002779
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002780Extension modules
2781-----------------
2782
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002783- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2784 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2785 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2786 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2787
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002788- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2789 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2790
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002791- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2792 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2793 and Greg Chapman.)
2794
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002795- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2796 recursively.
2797
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002798- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002799 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2800 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2801 leaks.
2802
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002803- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2804
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002805- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2806 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2807 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2808 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2809 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2810 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2811 #705836.
2812
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002813- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002814 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2815
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002816- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2817 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2818 See SF bug #692416.
2819
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002820- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2821 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2822
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002823- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2824 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2825 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002826
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002827- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002828 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2829 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2830
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002831- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2832 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2833 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2834 timeouts to work properly.
2835
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002836Library
2837-------
2838
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002839- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2840 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2841 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2842 future release.
2843
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002844- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2845 for querying platform dependent features.
2846
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002847- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002848
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002849- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2850 pickle protocol versions.
2851
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002852- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2853 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2854 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2855
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002856- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2857
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002858- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2859 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2860 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2861 modules.
2862
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002863- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2864 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2865 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2866
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002867- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2868 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2869
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002870- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2871 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2872 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2873
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002874- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002875 MS Office extensions.
2876
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002877- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2878 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2879
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002880- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2881 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2882
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002883- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2884 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2885 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2886 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2887 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2888 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2889
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002890- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2891 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2892 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002893
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002894- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2895 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2896 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2897
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002898- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2899
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002900- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2901 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2902 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2903
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002904Tools/Demos
2905-----------
2906
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002907- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2908 See the module docstring for details.
2909
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002910Build
2911-----
2912
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002913- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2914 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002915
2916C API
2917-----
2918
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002919- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2920
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002921- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2922 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2923 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2924
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002925- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2926 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002927
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002928 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2929 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2930 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002931
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002932- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002933 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2934
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002935- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2936 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2937 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002938
2939New platforms
2940-------------
2941
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002942None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002943
2944Tests
2945-----
2946
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002947- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2948 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002949
2950Windows
2951-------
2952
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002953- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2954 function.
2955
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002956- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2957 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002958
2959Mac
2960---
2961
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002962- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2963 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002964
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002965- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2966 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002967
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002968- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2969 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2970 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002971
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002972- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002973 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2974 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002975
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002976- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2977 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002978
2979
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002980What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2981=================================
2982
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002983*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002984
2985Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002986-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002987
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002988- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2989 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2990 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2991
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002992- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2993 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2994 (SF patch #664376.)
2995
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002996- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2997 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2998 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2999 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3000 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3001 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003002 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003003
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003004- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3005 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3006 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3007 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003008 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003009
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003010- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3011 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3012 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3013 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3014 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3015 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3016 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3017 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3018 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3019 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3020 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3021
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003022- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3023 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3024 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3025 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3026 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3027 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3028
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003029- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3030 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3031
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003032- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3033 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3034 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3035 case.)
3036
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003037- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3038 passed as unicode strings.
3039
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003040- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3041 See SF bug #683467.
3042
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003043- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3044 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3045
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003046- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3047
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003048- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3049
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003050- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3051 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3052 arguments.
3053
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003054- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3055 See SF bug #667147.
3056
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003057- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003058 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003059 See SF bug #676155.
3060
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003061- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003062 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003063 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3064 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3065 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3066 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3067 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3068 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003069
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003070Extension modules
3071-----------------
3072
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003073- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3074 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3075 tp_as_number pointer.
3076
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003077- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3078 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3079 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3080 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3081 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3082
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003083- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3084
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003085- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3086
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003087- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003088 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003089 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3090 patch #678531.)
3091
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003092- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3093 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3094
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003095- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3096 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3097
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003098- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3099
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003100- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3101 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3102 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3103
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003104- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3105
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003106- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3107 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3108
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003109- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003110
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003111- datetime changes:
3112
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003113 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3114
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003115 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3116 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3117 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3118 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3119 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3120 now.
3121
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003122 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003123 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3124 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003125
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003126 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003127 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003128 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3129 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3130 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3131 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003132
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003133 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3134 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3135 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003136 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3137
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003138 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3139 by a later example coded by Guido.
3140
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003141 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003142 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3143 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3144 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003145 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3146 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3147
3148 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3149 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3150 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3151 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3152 tzinfo subclass instance.
3153
3154 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3155 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3156 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3157 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3158 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3159 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3160 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3161 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003162
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003163 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3164 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3165 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3166 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3167 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003168 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3169
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003170 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003171
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003172 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3173 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3174 as a naive datetime object.
3175
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003176 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3177 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3178 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3179
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003180 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3181 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3182 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3183 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3184 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3185 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3186 comparison.
3187
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003188 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3189 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3190 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3191 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003192 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003193
3194 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003195
3196 and ::
3197
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003198 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3199
3200 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3201 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3202 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3203 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3204
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003205 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3206 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3207 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3208 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3209 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3210
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003211 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3212 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003213 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3214 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003215
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003216Library
3217-------
3218
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003219- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3220 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3221
3222- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3223 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3224 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3225 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3226 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3227 See PEP 307 for details.
3228
3229- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3230 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3231
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003232- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3233 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003234 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003235 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3236 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003237 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003238
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003239- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3240 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3241
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003242- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3243 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3244 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3245
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003246- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3247
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003248- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3249 exception.
3250
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003251- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3252 class.
3253
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003254- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3255 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3256 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3257
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003258- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3259 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3260
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003261- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003262 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3263 See SF bug #659228.
3264
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003265- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3266 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3267 See SF patch #651082.
3268
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003269- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003270
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003271- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3272 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3273
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003274- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003275 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003276
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003277- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3278 DOS paths from other platforms.
3279
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003280Tools/Demos
3281-----------
3282
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003283- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3284 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3285 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3286 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3287 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3288 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3289 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3290 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3291 example:
3292
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003293 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3294 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003295
3296 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3297
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003298
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003299Build
3300-----
3301
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003302- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3303 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3304 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003305 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3306
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003307 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3308
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003309- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3310 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3311 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3312 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3313 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3314 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3315 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3316 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3317 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3318
3319- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3320 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3321 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3322 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3323
3324- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3325 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3326
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003327C API
3328-----
3329
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003330- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3331 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003332
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003333- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3334 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3335 tp_as_number pointer.
3336
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003337- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3338 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3339 (SF #681367)
3340
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003341- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3342 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3343 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3344 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003345
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003346Tests
3347-----
3348
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003349- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003350 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3351 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3352 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3353 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3354 pydoc.)
3355
3356- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3357
3358- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003359
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003360Windows
3361-------
3362
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003363- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3364 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3365 time).
3366
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003367- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3368 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3369
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003370- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3371 release without strong cryptography.
3372
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003373- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003374 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003375
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003376- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3377 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3378
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003379Mac
3380---
3381
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003382- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3383 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003384
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003385- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3386 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3387 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003388
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003389- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3390 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003391
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003392- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3393 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3394 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3395 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003396
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003397- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003398 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3399 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3400 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003401
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003402
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003403What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003404=================================
3405
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003406*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003407
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003408Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003409--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003410
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003411- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3412
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003413- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3414 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003415 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003416 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003417 a different meaning than before.
3418
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003419- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003420 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003421 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003422
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003423- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003424 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003425 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003426
3427- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3428 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3429 and deallocation.
3430
3431- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3432 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3433
3434- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3435 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3436 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3437 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3438 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3439
3440- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3441 now detected by the garbage collector.
3442
3443- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3444 [SF bug 519621]
3445
3446- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3447 identifier.
3448
3449- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3450 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3451 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3452 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3453 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3454 [SF bug 563060]
3455
3456- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3457 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3458 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3459 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3460 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3461
3462- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3463 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3464 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3465
3466- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3467
3468- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3469 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3470 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3471 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3472 state of the slots would be lost.)
3473
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003474Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003475-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003476
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003477- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003478 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3479 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3480 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3481 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003482 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3483 Jython 2.1.
3484
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003485- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003486 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003487 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3488 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3489 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3490 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3491 these, see PEP 302.
3492
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003493- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3494 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3495 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3496
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003497- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3498 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3499 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3500
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003501- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3502 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3503 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3504
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003505- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3506 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3507 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3508 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3509 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3510 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3511 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3512 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3513 releases or implementations.
3514
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003515- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003516 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3517 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003518
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003519- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3520 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3521
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003522- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3523 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3524 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3525
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003526- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3527 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3528
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003529- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3530 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003531 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3532 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003533
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003534- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3535 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3536 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3537 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3538 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3539
3540 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3541 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3542 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3543 pattern.
3544
3545 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3546 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3547 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3548 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3549
3550 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3551 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3552 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3553 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3554 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3555 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3556
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003557- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3558 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3559 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3560 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3561 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3562 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3563 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3564 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003565
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003566- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3567 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3568 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3569 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3570 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003571 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3572 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3573 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3574 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3575 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3576 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3577 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003578
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003579- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3580 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3581
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003582- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3583 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3584 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3585 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3586 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3587 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3588 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3589 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3590 to Zack Weinberg!
3591
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003592- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3593 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3594 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3595 type. This has been fixed now.
3596
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003597- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3598 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3599 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3600
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003601- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3602 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3603 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3604 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3605 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3606 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3607 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3608 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003609 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003610
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003611- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3612 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3613 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003614
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003615- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3616 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3617 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3618 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3619 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3620 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3621 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3622 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003623 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003624 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3625 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3626
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003627- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3628 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3629 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3630 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3631 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3632 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3633 this.)
3634
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003635- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3636 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003637 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003638 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003639 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3640 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003641 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3642 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003643
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003644- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3645 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3646 currently running.
3647
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003648- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3649 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3650 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3651 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3652
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003653- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3654 as directory names.
3655
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003656- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3657 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3658
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003659- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3660 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3661
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003662- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003663 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3664 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003665
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003666- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3667 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3668 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3669 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3670 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3671
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003672- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3673 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3674 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3675 removed.
3676
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003677- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3678 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3679 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3680
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003681- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3682 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3683 to __debug__.
3684
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003685- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3686 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3687 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3688
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003689- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3690 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3691 deprecated now.
3692
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003693- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3694 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3695 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003696
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003697- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3698 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3699 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3700 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3701 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003702
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003703- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3704 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3705
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003706- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3707 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3708 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003709 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003710 is backward compatible.
3711
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003712- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3713 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3714 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3715 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3716 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3717
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003718- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3719 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3720 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3721 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3722 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3723 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003724
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003725- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3726 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3727
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003728- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3729 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3730
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003731- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3732 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3733 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3734 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3735 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3736
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003737- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3738 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3739 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3740
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003741- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003742 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3743
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003744- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3745 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3746 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003747
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003748- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3749 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3750
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003751- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3752 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3753 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3754
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003755- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3756
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003757Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003758-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003759
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003760- Added three operators to the operator module:
3761 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3762 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3763 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3764
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003765- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3766
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003767- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3768 archives.
3769
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003770- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3771 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3772 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3773
3774 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3775
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003776- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3777 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3778 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003779 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003780
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003781- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3782 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3783 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3784 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003785 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3786 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3787 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3788 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003789
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003790- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3791 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003792
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003793- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3794
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003795- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3796 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3797
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003798- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3799 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3800 supported.
3801
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003802- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3803
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003804- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3805 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003806
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003807- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3808 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3809
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003810- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3811
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003812- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3813 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3814
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003815- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3816 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3817 functions but callable type objects.
3818
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003819- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003820 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003821 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003822
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003823- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3824 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003825
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003826- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3827 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003828
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003829- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3830 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3831 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3832 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3833
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003834- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3835 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003836
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003837- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3838 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3839 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3840 and __imul__.
3841
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003842- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003843 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3844 is called.
3845
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003846- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3847 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3848 interpreter was compiled.
3849
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003850- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3851 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3852 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003853 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003854 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3855 1, not 2.
3856
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003857- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3858 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3859 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3860 limit.
3861
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003862- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3863 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3864 bug #623464.
3865
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003866- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3867 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3868 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3869 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3870
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003871Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003872-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003873
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003874- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3875
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003876- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3877 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3878 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3879 with Python 2.3a2.
3880
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003881- os.path exposes getctime.
3882
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003883- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003884 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003885 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003886 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003887 unit tests of floating point results.
3888
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003889- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3890 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3891 has been increased.
3892
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003893- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3894 executed.
3895
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003896- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3897 postinstallation script.
3898
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003899- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3900 test the current module.
3901
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003902- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003903 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3904 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3905 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3906 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3907
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003908- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003909 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003910 Ward's Optik package.
3911
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003912- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3913 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3914 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3915 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3916
3917- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3918 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003919 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003920
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003921- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3922 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3923 shelf are binary pickles.
3924
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003925- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3926 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3927
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003928- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3929 modules are iterators now.
3930
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003931- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3932 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3933 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3934 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3935 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3936 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003937
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003938- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3939 with their entity value.
3940
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003941- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3942
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003943- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3944 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003945
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003946- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3947 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003948 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003949
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003950- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3951 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3952 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3953 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3954 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3955 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3956 main():
3957
3958 import locale
3959 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3960
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003961- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3962 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3963
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003964- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3965 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3966 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3967 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3968 to the new standard.
3969
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003970- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3971 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3972 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3973 an extension to the database.
3974
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003975- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3976 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3977 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3978 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003979 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003980
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003981- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003982 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003983
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003984- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3985 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3986 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3987 bounded integers.
3988
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003989- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3990 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3991 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3992 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3993 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3994 in existence.
3995
3996 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3997 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3998 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3999 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4000 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4001 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4002
4003 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4004 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4005 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4006 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4007
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004008- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4009 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4010 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4011
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004012- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4013
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004014- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4015 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4016 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4017 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4018
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004019- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4020 argument.
4021
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004022- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4023 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4024 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4025 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4026 [SF patch 560794].
4027
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004028- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4029 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4030 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004031 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4032 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4033 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004034
4035- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4036 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004037
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004038- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4039 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4040 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4041 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004042
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004043- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4044 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4045 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4046 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4047 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4048
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004049- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004050
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004051- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4052
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004053- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4054 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4055 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4056 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4057 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4058 identical to None.
4059
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004060- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4061 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4062 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4063 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4064 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4065 results now.
4066
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004067- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4068 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4069
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004070- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4071 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4072 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4073 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4074 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4075 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4076 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4077 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4078
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004079- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4080
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004081- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4082 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4083
4084- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4085 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4086 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4087 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4088 and other systems.
4089
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004090- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4091 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4092 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4093 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 +00004094 work well with these.
4095
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004096- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4097
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004098- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004099 connections.
4100
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004101- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4102 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4103 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4104
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004105- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4106 sets
4107
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004108- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4109 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4110 name.
4111
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004112- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4113 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4114 passed in.
4115
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004116- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004117 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004118 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4119 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004120
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004121- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4122
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004123- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4124
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004125- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4126 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4127 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4128
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004129- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4130 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4131 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4132 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004133 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004134
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004135- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004136 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004137 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004138
4139- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4140 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4141 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4142
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004143- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004144 the value of its expression argument.
4145
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004146- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4147 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4148 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4149
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004150- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4151 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4152 skipstone browser was included.
4153
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004154- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4155 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4156
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004157Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004158-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004159
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004160- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4161 names in addition to accepting file names.
4162
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004163- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4164 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4165 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4166 still used and useful.)
4167
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004168- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4169 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4170 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4171 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004172
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004173- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4174 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4175 the generated binary.
4176
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004177Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004178-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004179
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004180- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4181
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004182- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4183 except in the hands of experts.
4184
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004185- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004186 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4187 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4188 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004189
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004190- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4191 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4192 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4193 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4194 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4195 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4196 builds.
4197
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004198- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4199 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4200 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4201 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4202 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4203 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4204 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4205 new type.
4206
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004207- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004208
4209 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4210 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4211 positive infinities.
4212
4213 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4214 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4215 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4216 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4217 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4218 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4219 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4220
4221 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4222
4223 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4224
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004225- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4226 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4227 size of the executable.
4228
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004229- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4230 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4231 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4232 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004233
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004234- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4235
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004236- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4237 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4238 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004239
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004240- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4241 well as Unix.
4242
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004243- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4244 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4245 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4246 modules in the README file for details.
4247
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004248C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004249-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004250
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004251- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4252 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004253 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004254 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004255 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004256
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004257- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4258 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4259 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4260 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4261 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4262 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004263 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004264 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4265 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4266 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4267 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4268 aligned.)
4269
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004270- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4271 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4272 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4273
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004274- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4275 level.
4276
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004277- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4278 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4279 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4280 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4281 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4282
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004283- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4284 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4285 code.
4286
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004287- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4288 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4289 adjusting for negative indices.
4290
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004291- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4292 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4293 object.
4294
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004295- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4296 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4297 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4298
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004299- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4300 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004301
4302- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4303
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004304- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4305 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4306 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4307 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4308
4309- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4310
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004311- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004312
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004313- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004314 without going through the buffer API.
4315
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004316- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004317
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004318- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4319 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4320 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4321 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4322
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004323- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4324 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4325
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004326- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004327 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4328
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004329New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004330-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004331
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004332- OpenVMS is now supported.
4333
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004334- AtheOS is now supported.
4335
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004336- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4337
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004338- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4339
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004340Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004341-----
4342
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004343- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4344 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4345 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004346
4347Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004348-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004349
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004350- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4351 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4352 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4353 bugs.
4354 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004355 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004356 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4357 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004358 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004359
4360- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004361 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004362
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004363- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4364 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4365
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004366- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4367 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004368 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004369 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4370
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004371- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4372 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4373 use files" uninstall option).
4374
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004375- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4376
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004377- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4378 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4379
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004380- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4381 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4382 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4383
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004384- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4385 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4386 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4387 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4388 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004389 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4390 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4391 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004392
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004393- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004394 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004395 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4396 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4397 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4398 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4399 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4400 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4401 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4402 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4403 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4404 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4405 work around.
4406
4407- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4408 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4409 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4410 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4411 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4412 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4413 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4414 specified with O_CREAT too).
4415
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004416Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004417----
4418
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004419- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004420
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004421- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4422 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4423 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4424
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004425- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4426 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4427 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4428
4429- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4430 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4431 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4432 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4433 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4434 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4435 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4436 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004437
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004438- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4439 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4440 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004441
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004442- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4443 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4444 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4445 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4446 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004447
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004448- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4449 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4450 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004451
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004452- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4453 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004454
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004455- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4456 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4457 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4458 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4459 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004460
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004461- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4462 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4463 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4464
4465- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4466 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4467 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004468
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004469- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4470 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4471 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4472 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004473 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004474
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004475- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4476 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004477
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004478- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4479 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004480
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004481- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004482 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004483 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4484 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004485
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004486
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004487What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004488===============================
4489
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004490*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4491
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004492Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004493--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004494
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004495- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4496 with a custom metaclass.
4497
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004498Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004499-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004500
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004501- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4502 are proxies.
4503
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004504Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004505-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004506
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004507- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4508 very short strings.
4509
4510- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4511 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4512 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4513 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4514 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4515
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004516Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004517-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004518
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004519- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4520 close or delete time).
4521
4522- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4523 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4524
4525- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4526
4527- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004528 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004529
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004530Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004531-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004532
4533Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004534-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004535
4536C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004537-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004538
4539New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004540-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004541
4542Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004543-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004544
4545Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004546-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004547
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004548- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4549
4550- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4551 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4552
4553- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4554 deleted at process exit time.
4555
4556- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4557 in backslash.
4558
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004559Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004560----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004561
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004562- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4563 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4564 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4565
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004566
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004567What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004568===========================
4569
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004570*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4571
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004572Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004573--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004574
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004575- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4576 been extensively updated. See
4577
4578 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4579
4580 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4581
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004582- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4583 deleted!
4584
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004585- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4586 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4587 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4588 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4589 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4590
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004591- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4592
4593 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4594 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4595
4596 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4597 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4598 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4599 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4600 supported anyway.
4601
4602 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4603 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4604
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004605- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4606 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4607 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4608 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4609 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004610
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004611- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4612 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4613 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4614
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004615Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004616-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004617
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004618- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4619 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4620 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4621 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4622 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4623 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004624 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4625 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4626 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4627 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004628
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004629- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4630 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4631 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4632
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004633Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004634-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004635
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004636- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4637
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004638Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004639-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004640
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004641- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4642 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4643 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4644 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4645 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4646 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4647
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004648- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4649
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004650- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4651
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004652- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4653
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004654- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4655 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4656 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4657
4658- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4659
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004660Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004661-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004662
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004663- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4664 off a search on Google.
4665
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004666Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004667-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004668
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004669- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4670 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4671 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4672 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4673 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4674 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4675 other platforms should do likewise.
4676
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004677- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4678 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4679 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4680
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004681C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004682-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004683
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004684- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4685 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4686 producing key-value pairs.
4687
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004688- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004689 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004690 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4691 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4692 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4693 previously went unchallenged.
4694
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004695New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004696-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004697
4698Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004699-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004700
4701Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004702-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004703
4704Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004705----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004706
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004707- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4708 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004709
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004710- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4711 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4712 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4713 home.
4714
4715
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004716What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004717===========================
4718
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004719*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4720
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004721Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004722--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004723
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004724- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4725 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004726
4727 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004728 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004729
4730 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4731 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004732 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004733 This needs to be documented.
4734
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004735- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4736 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4737
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004738- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4739 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4740 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4741
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004742- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4743 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4744
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004745- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4746 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4747 class forbids it).
4748
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004749- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4750 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4751 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4752
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004753- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4754
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004755Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004756-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004757
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004758- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4759 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004760 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004761
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004762- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4763 (like 1 + '').
4764
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004765Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004766-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004767
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004768- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4769 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4770 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4771 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004772 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004773 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4774
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004775- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4776 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4777 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4778 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4779
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004780- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4781 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004782 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4783 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4784 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004785
4786- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4787 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004788
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004789- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4790 bytes on its input.
4791
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004792Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004793-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004794
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004795- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004796 convenience function.
4797
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004798- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4799 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4800 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004801 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4802 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4803 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4804 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4805 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4806 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004807
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004808- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4809 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4810 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4811 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4812
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004813- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4814 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4815 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4816
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004817- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4818 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4819 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4820 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4821
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004822- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4823 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004824 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004825 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4826 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4827 new -l and -e options.
4828
4829- statcache is now deprecated.
4830
4831- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4832 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004833 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004834 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4835 time properly taken into account.
4836
4837- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4838 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4839 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4840 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4841
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004842Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004843-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004844
4845Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004846-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004847
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004848- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4849 is built with libdb3 if available.
4850
4851- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4852
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004853C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004854-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004855
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004856- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4857 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4858 PySequence_Size().
4859
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004860- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4861
4862- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4863 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4864 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4865
4866- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4867 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4868
4869- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4870 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4871
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004872New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004873-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004874
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004875- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4876 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4877
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004878- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4879 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4880
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004881- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4882
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004883Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004884-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004885
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004886- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4887 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4888
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004889Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004890-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004891
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004892Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004893----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004894
4895- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4896 removed completely in the next release.
4897
4898- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4899 OSX.
4900
4901- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4902 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4903
4904- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4905
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004906
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004907What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004908===========================
4909
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004910*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4911
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004912Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004913--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004914
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004915- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004916 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004917 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004918 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4919 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004920 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4921 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004922 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4923 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004924
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004925- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4926 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4927
4928- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4929 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4930
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004931Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004932-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004933
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004934- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4935 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4936 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4937 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4938 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4939 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4940 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4941 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4942
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004943- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4944 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4945 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4946 example).
4947
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004948- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004949 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004950 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004951 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004952
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004953- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4954 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4955 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004956 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004957
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004958- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4959 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4960 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4961 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4962 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4963 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4964
4965 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4966
4967 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4968
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004969Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004970-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004971
4972- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4973
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004974- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4975
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004976- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4977 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004978
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004979- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4980 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4981 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4982 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4983 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4984 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004985 attributes.
4986
4987- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4988 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4989 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004990
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004991- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4992 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4993 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004994
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004995- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4996 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4997 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004998 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4999 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5000
5001- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5002 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005003
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005004Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005005-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005006
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005007- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5008 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5009
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005010- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5011 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5012 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5013 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5014
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005015- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5016 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5017 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5018 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5019
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005020 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5021 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5022 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5023 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5024 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5025 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5026 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5027 without losing information).
5028
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005029- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005030 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5031 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5032 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5033 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5034 module).
5035
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005036 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005037 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5038 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5039 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5040 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005041
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005042- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005043 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5044 encoding.
5045
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005046- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5047 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5048
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005049- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005050 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5051
5052- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5053 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5054 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5055 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5056
5057- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5058
5059- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5060 ON, and OFF.
5061
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005062- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5063 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5064
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005065Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005066-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005067
5068- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5069 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5070 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005071
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005072- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5073 been added: -X and -E.
5074
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005075Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005076-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005077
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005078- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5079 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5080
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005081C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005082-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005083
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005084- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5085 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5086 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5087 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5088 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5089
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005090- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5091 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5092 as long) arguments.
5093
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005094- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5095 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5096 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5097 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5098 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5099 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5100
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005101- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5102 input.
5103
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005104New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005105-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005106
5107Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005108-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005109
5110Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005111-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005112
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005113- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5114 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5115 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5116
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005117- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5118 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5119 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005120 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005121
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005122 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5123 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5124 import signal
5125 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005126
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005127 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005128 while 1:
5129 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005130 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005131 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5132 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5133 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5134 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005135
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005136
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005137What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5138===========================
5139
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005140*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5141
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005142Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005143--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005144
5145- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5146 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5147 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5148
5149- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5150 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5151 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5152 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5153 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5154 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5155 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005156
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005157- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005158 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005159 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5160 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5161 associate a docstring with a property.
5162
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005163- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5164 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5165 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5166 other built-in object types.
5167
5168- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5169 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5170 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5171 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5172 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5173
5174- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5175 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5176
5177- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5178 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005179 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005180 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5181 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5182 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5183 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5184 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5185
5186- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5187 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5188 class.
5189
5190- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5191 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5192 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5193 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5194
5195- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5196 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5197 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5198 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5199
5200- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5201 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5202
5203- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5204 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5205 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5206 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5207 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005208 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005209 with the same value as s.
5210
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005211- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5212
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005213Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005214----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005215
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005216- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5217
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005218- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5219 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5220 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5221 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5222 objects.
5223
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005224- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5225 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005226 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5227 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5228
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005229- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5230 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5231 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5232
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005233Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005234-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005235
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005236- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5237 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5238 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5239 by the instances.
5240
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005241- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5242 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5243 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5244
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005245- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5246 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5247 before the entire comparison is complete.
5248
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005249- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5250 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5251 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5252
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005253- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5254 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5255 getwriter().
5256
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005257- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5258 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5259
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005260- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005261 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5262 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5263
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005264- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5265 iterable object.
5266
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005267- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5268 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005269
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005270- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5271 authentication.
5272
5273- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5274 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005275
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005276- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005277 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5278 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5279 a sample driver.)
5280
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005281Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005282-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005283
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005284- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5285 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5286 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5287 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5288 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5289 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5290 kernel has large file support.
5291
5292- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5293 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5294 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5295 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5296 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5297
5298- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5299 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5300 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5301
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005302C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005303-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005304
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005305- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5306 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5307
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005308New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005309-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005310
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005311- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5312 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5313
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005314Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005315-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005316
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005317- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5318 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5319 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5320 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5321 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5322
5323- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5324 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5325 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5326 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5327
5328- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5329 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5330
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005331Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005332-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005333
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005334- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005335 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5336 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005337
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005338
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005339What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5340===========================
5341
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005342*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5343
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005344Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005345----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005346
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005347- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5348 big to represent as a C double.
5349
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005350- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5351 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5352 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5353 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5354 restriction).
5355
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005356- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5357 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5358 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5359 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5360 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5361
5362 >>> dir([])
5363 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5364 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5365 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5366 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5367 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5368 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5369 'reverse', 'sort']
5370
5371 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5372
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005373- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005374 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5375 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5376 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5377 OverflowError exception.
5378
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005379- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005380 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005381 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5382 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5383 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5384 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5385 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005386 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005387 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5388 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5389
5390 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5391 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5392 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5393 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005394
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005395- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005396 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5397 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5398 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5399 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5400 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5401 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5402 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5403 once it is created.
5404
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005405- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5406 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5407 (key, value) pairs.
5408
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005409- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005410 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5411 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5412
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005413- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5414 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5415 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5416 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5417 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005418
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005419- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005420 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5421 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5422
5423 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5424
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005425- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005426 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5427
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005428Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005429-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005430
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005431- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005432 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5433 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005434
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005435- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5436 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5437 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5438 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5439 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5440 in this area anymore).
5441
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005442- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5443 threading.Timer.
5444
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005445- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5446 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5447
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005448- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005449 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5450
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005451- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005452 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5453 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5454 converted to Python longs.
5455
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005456- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005457 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5458
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005459- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5460 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5461 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5462
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005463Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005464-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005465
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005466- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5467 division operators as per PEP 238.
5468
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005469Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005470-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005471
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005472- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5473 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5474 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5475 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5476
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005477C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005478-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005479
5480- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005481
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005482- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5483 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005484 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005485
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005486 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5487 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005488 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005489 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005490
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005491- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005492 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5493 module:
5494
5495 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005496
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005497 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5498 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005499
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005500 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5501 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005502
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005503 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5504
5505 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5506
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005507- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005508 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5509 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5510 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005511
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005512New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005513-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005514
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005515- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5516 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5517 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5518 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5519 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005520
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005521Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005522-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005523
5524Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005525-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005526
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005527- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5528 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5529 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5530 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005531 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5532 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5533 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5534 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5535 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005536
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005537- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005538 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5539
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005540
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005541What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5542===========================
5543
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005544*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5545
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005546Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005547-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005548
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005549- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5550 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5551
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005552- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5553 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5554 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005555
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005556- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5557 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5558 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5559 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005560
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005561- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5562
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005563- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005564
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005565Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005566-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005567
5568- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005569 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005570 the module docstring for details.
5571
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005572Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005573-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005574
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005575- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005576 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5577 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5578 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005579
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005580- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5581 Nick Mathewson.
5582
5583Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005584----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005585
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005586- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5587 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5588 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5589 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5590 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5591 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5592 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5593 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5594
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005595- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5596 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5597 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5598 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5599
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005600- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5601 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5602 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5603 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5604 come a long way).
5605
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005606- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5607 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5608 write filters for these warnings).
5609
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005610- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5611 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5612 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5613 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5614 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5615
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005616- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5617 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5618 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5619 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5620 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5621 older distribution.
5622
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005623Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005624-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005625
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005626- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5627 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005628 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005629
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005630- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5631 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5632 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5633
5634- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5635
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005636- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5637
5638- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5639
5640- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5641
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005642- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005643
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005644- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5645
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005646New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005647-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005648
5649C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005650-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005651
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005652- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5653 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5654 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5655 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5656 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5657 against buffer overruns.
5658
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005659- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005660 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5661 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005662 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5663 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5664 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5665
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005666- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5667 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5668 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5669 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5670 deprecated.
5671
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005672Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005673-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005674
5675- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5676 relevant is found.
5677
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005678
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005679What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005680===========================
5681
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005682*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5683
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005684Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005685----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005686
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005687- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5688 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5689 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5690 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5691 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5692 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5693 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5694 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005695 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005696 repaired.
5697
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005698- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005699 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005700 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5701 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5702 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5703 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5704 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5705 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5706 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5707 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5708
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005709- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5710 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5711 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5712 leading BMO character).
5713
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005714- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5715 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5716 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5717
5718 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5719 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5720 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005721
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005722 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5723 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5724 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5725 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5726 for various simple to use conversions.
5727
5728 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5729 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5730
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005731 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5732 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5733 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5734 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5735 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5736 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5737 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5738 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5739 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5740 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5741 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5742 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5743 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5744 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5745 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005746
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005747- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5748 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5749 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005750 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005751 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005752
5753 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005754 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5755 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5756 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5757 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5758 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005759 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5760 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005761
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005762 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5763 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5764 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005765 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005766
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005767- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5768 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5769 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5770 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5771 floating arithmetic,
5772
5773 x = 9007199254740992.0
5774 print long(x)
5775
5776 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5777 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5778 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5779 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5780 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5781 functions are of good quality).
5782
5783 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5784 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5785 algorithms to break.
5786
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005787- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5788 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5789 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5790 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5791 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5792 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5793 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5794 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5795 order.
5796
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005797- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5798 operation along the most common code paths.
5799
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005800- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5801 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5802
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005803- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5804 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5805 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5806 {}.update(UserDict())
5807
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005808- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5809 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5810 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5811 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5812 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5813 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5814 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5815 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5816
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005817- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005818 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005819
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005820 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005821 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5822 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005823 join() method of strings
5824 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005825 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5826 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005827 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005828 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005829
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005830- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5831 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5832
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005833- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5834 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5835
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005836- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5837 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5838 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5839 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5840
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005841- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5842 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005843 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005844 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5845 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005846
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005847- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5848
5849
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005850Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005851-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005852
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005853- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005854 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005855 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5856 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5857
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005858- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5859 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5860
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005861- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5862 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5863 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5864 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5865
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005866- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5867 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5868 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5869
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005870- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5871
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005872- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5873
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005874- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5875 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5876 that are still imported into string.py).
5877
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005878- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5879
5880- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5881 Now it does.
5882
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005883- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5884
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005885- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5886 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5887 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5888 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5889 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005890 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5891 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005892
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005893- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5894 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5895 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5896 'help(object)'.
5897
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005898Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005899-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005900
5901- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005902 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005903 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5904 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5905
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005906- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005907 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5908 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005909
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005910C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005911-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005912
5913- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5914 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005915
5916----
5917
5918**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**