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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
8================================
9
10*Release date: XXXX-XX-XX*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +000015- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
16 constant.
17
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +000018- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
19 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
20 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
21 large), and to anomalies such as
22 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
23 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
24 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
25 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +000026
27Extension modules
28-----------------
29
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +000030- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
31 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
32 an assert failure in a debug build.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +000033
34Library
35-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +000036
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +000037- Updates for the email package:
38 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
39 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
40 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
41 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
42 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
43 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
44 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
45 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
46 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
47 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
48 + Updates to documentation.
49
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +000050- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
51 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
52 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
53 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
54
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +000055- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +000056
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +000057- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
58 applications should use the getmember function.
59
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +000060- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
61
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +000062- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
63 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
64 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
65 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
66 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
67 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
68 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
69 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
70 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
71
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +000072- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
73 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +000074 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +000075
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +000076- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
77 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
78 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
79 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
80 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
81 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
82 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
83 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +000084
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +000085- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
86 the new public features (of which there are many).
87
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +000088- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +000089 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
90 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
91 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
92 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +000093 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +000094
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +000095- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
96
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +000097- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
98 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
99 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
100 options.
101
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000102- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
103 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
104 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
105 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
106 conditions under which non-string values work.
107
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000108Build
109-----
110
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000111- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
112 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
113 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
114
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000115- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
116 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
117 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
118 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
119 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000120
121C API
122-----
123
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000124- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
125
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000126- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
127 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
128 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000129
130Documentation
131-------------
132
133...
134
135Tests
136-----
137
138- test__locale ported to unittest
139
140Windows
141-------
142
143...
144
145Mac
146---
147
148...
149
150New platforms
151-------------
152
153...
154
155Tools/Demos
156-----------
157
158...
159
160
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000161What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
162=================================
163
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000164*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000165
166Core and builtins
167-----------------
168
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000169- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000170 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
171
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000172- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
173 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
174 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
175 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
176 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
177 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
178 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
179 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000180 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
181 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
182 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
183 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
184 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000185
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000186- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
187 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
188 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
189 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
190 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
191
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000192- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
193
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000194- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
195 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
196
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000197- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
198 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
199 modified the list.
200
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000201- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
202 functions is now writable.
203
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000204- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
205 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
206 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
207 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
208
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000209- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
210 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
211 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
212 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
213 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000214
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000215- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
216 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
217
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000218Extension modules
219-----------------
220
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000221- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
222
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000223- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
224 data.
225
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000226- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
227 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
228 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
229 supposed to have been truncated away.
230
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000231- Added socket.socketpair().
232
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000233- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
234 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
235
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000236- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000237 versions of Python, have now been removed.
238
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000239Library
240-------
241
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000242- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000243 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000244
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000245- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
246 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
247
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000248- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
249 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
250
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000251- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
252
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000253- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
254 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000255
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000256- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
257 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
258
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000259- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
260
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000261- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
262
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000263- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
264
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000265- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
266 Percivall.
267
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000268- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
269 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
270
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000271- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
272 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
273 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000274 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000275
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000276- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
277 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
278 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
279 and exponent.
280
281- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
282
283- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
284 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
285 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
286
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000287- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
288 to the readline module.
289
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000290- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000291 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
292 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000293
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000294- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
295 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
296 contains symlinks.
297
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000298- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
299 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
300
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000301- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
302 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
303 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
304
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000305- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
306 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
307 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
308 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
309 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
310 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
311 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
312 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
313 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
314 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
315 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
316 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
317 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
318
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000319- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
320
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000321Tools/Demos
322-----------
323
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000324- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
325 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
326
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000327- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
328
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000329Build
330-----
331
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000332- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
333 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
334 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
335 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
336 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
337 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
338 plans to do so.
339
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000340- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
341 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
342
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000343- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
344 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
345
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000346- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
347 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
348
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000349- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
350 GNU/k*BSD systems.
351
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000352- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
353 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
354
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000355C API
356-----
357
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000358..
359
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000360Documentation
361-------------
362
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000363- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
364 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
365
366- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
367 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
368 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000369
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000370New platforms
371-------------
372
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000373- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
374
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000375Tests
376-----
377
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000378..
379
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000380Windows
381-------
382
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000383- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
384 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
385 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
386 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
387 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
388 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
389 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
390 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
391 the problem.
392
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000393Mac
394---
395
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000396..
397
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000398
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000399What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
400=================================
401
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000402*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000403
404Core and builtins
405-----------------
406
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000407- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
408 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
409 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
410 sensitive code.
411
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000412- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000413 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000414
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000415 @staticmethod
416 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000417
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000418 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000419
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000420- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
421 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
422 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
423 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
424 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
425 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
426 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
427 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
428 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
429 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
430 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
431
432 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
433 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
434 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
435 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
436 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
437 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
438 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
439
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000440- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
441 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
442
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000443- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000444 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000445
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000446- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000447 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000448 which was missing for no apparent reason.
449
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000450- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000451 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
452 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
453
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000454- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
455 types that support garbage collection.
456
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000457- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
458
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000459- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
460 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
461 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
462 Jython.
463
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000464- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
465
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000466- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
467 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
468
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000469- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
470 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
471 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000472
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000473- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
474 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
475 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
476
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000477Extension modules
478-----------------
479
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000480- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
481
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000482Library
483-------
484
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000485- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
486 TIS-620
487
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000488- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
489 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
490 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
491 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
492 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
493 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
494 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
495 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
496 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
497 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
498
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000499- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
500
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000501- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
502 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
503 same as when the argument is omitted).
504 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
505
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000506- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
507
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000508- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
509 schemes are offered.
510
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000511- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
512
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000513- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
514 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
515 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
516
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000517- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
518
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000519- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
520 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
521
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000522- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
523 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
524 when dummy_threading is being used.
525
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000526- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
527 from a tarfile.
528
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000529- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000530 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000531
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000532- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
533 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
534 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
535 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
536
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000537- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
538 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
539
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000540- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
541 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
542 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
543 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
544 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
545 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
546 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
547 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
548 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
549 by some other method in progress).
550
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000551- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
552 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
553 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000554
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000555- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
556
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000557- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
558 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
559 AM Kuchling.
560
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000561- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
562 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
563 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
564
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000565- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
566 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
567 instead of unsigned.
568
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000569- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000570 no longer part of the public API.
571
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000572- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
573 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
574 string methods of the same name).
575
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000576- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000577 SF patch 945642.
578
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000579- doctest unittest integration improvements:
580
581 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
582
583 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
584 DocTestSuites.
585
586- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
587 that provide thread-local data.
588
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000589- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
590 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
591
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000592- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
593
594- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
595 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
596 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
597
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000598- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
599
600 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
601 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
602 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000603
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000604 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
605 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
606 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
607 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
608
609 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
610 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
611
612 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
613 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
614 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
615 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
616
617 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
618 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
619 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
620 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
621 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
622
623 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
624 wrapping help output.
625
626 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
627 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
628 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000629
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000630C API
631-----
632
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000633- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
634 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
635 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
636 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
637 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
638 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
639 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
640 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
641 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
642 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
643 its visible semantics have not changed.
644
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000645- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
646 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
647
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000648Documentation
649-------------
650
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000651- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000652
653 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000654 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000655
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000656 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000657
658 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
659
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000660- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000661
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000662Tests
663-----
664
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000665- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000666 platforms that use the Makefile.
667
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000668- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
669 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
670 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
671
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000672
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000673What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
674=================================
675
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000676*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000677
678Core and builtins
679-----------------
680
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000681- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
682 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
683 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
684 objects now (one object instead of three).
685
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000686- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
687 Windows DLLs.
688
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000689- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
690 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000691
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000692- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
693 a new .pyc magic.
694
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000695- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
696 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
697 be there.
698
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000699- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
700 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
701 the LC_NUMERIC category.
702
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000703- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
704 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
705 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
706
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000707- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
708
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000709- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
710 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
711 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000712
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000713- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
714 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
715
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000716- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
717
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000718- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000719 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000720
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000721- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
722
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000723- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
724
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000725- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
726 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
727
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000728- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
729 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
730 Fixes bug #858016 .
731
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000732- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
733 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
734 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
735
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000736- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
737 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
738 improves their performance (about 35%).
739
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000740- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
741 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
742 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
743
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000744- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
745 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
746 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
747 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
748
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000749- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
750 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
751 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
752 length is not known).
753
754- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
755 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000756 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
757 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000758 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
759
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000760- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
761 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
762
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000763- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
764 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
765 keyword arguments.
766
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000767- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
768 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
769 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
770
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +0000771- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
772 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
773 cases.
774
775- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
776 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
777 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
778 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
779 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
780 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
781 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
782 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
783 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
784 a release build.
785
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000786- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
787 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
788
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000789- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000790 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000791
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000792- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
793 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
794 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
795 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
796 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
797 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
798 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
799 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
800 destroyed.
801
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000802- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
803 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
804 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
805 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
806 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
807 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
808 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
809 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
810
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000811- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
812 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
813 character other than a space.
814
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000815- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
816 by the function object or by the method object, the function
817 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
818 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
819 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
820 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
821 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
822 attributes with the same name.
823
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000824- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
825 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
826 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
827 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
828 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
829 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
830 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
831 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
832 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
833 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
834 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
835 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
836 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
837 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000838
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000839- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
840 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
841 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
842 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
843 This has been repaired.
844
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000845- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
846
847- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
848
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000849- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
850 over a sequence.
851
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000852- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000853 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000854
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000855- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
856
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000857- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
858 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
859 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
860 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
861 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
862 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
863 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
864 records with equal keys is unchanged).
865
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000866- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
867 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
868 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
869
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000870- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
871 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
872 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
873 freelist.
874
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000875- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
876 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
877
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000878- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
879 number.
880
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000881- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
882 a TypeError exception.
883
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000884- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
885 820195.
886
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000887- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
888 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
889 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
890
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000891- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000892 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
893 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +0000894
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +0000895- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
896 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
897 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
898
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000899- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
900 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000901 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000902
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000903- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +0000904 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
905 the first call.
906
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000907
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000908Extension modules
909-----------------
910
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +0000911- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
912 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
913
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000914- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
915 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
916 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
917 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
918 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
919 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
920 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +0000921
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +0000922- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
923
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +0000924- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
925
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +0000926- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
927 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
928
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +0000929- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
930 fewer false positives.
931
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +0000932- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
933 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
934
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000935- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +0000936 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
937
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +0000938- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000939 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +0000940 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +0000941 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
942 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +0000943
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +0000944- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
945 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
946 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
947 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
948
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +0000949- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
950 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
951 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
952 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
953 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
954 #897625.
955
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +0000956- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
957 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
958
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +0000959- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
960 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
961 and pops on either side of the deque.
962
963- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
964 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
965
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +0000966- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
967 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
968 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
969 other functions that expect a function argument.
970
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +0000971- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
972
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000973- os.getsid was added.
974
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +0000975- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
976 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
977 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
978
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +0000979- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
980
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +0000981- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
982
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +0000983- readline.clear_history was added.
984
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +0000985- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
986
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +0000987- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
988
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +0000989- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
990
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +0000991- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
992
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +0000993- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
994
995- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
996
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +0000997- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
998
999- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1000
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001001- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1002 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1003 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1004
1005- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1006 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1007 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1008 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1009 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1010 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1011 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1012
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001013- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1014 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1015 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1016 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001017
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001018- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001019 iterators from a single iterable.
1020
1021- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1022 of raising a TypeError exception.
1023
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001024- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1025 as parameter.
1026
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001027Library
1028-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001029
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001030- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1031 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1032 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001033
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001034- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1035 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1036 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001037
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001038- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001039
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001040- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1041 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001042
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001043- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1044 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1045
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001046- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1047
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001048- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001049 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001050
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001051- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001052 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001053
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001054- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1055
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001056- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1057 on cygwin and mingw32.
1058
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001059- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1060
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001061- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1062 module.
1063
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001064- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1065 installation scheme for all platforms.
1066
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001067- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001068 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001069
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001070- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1071 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1072 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1073
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001074- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1075 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1076 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1077
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001078- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1079
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001080- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1081
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001082- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1083 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1084
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001085- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1086 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1087 type pattern with the same value exists.
1088
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001089- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1090 when run from the command prompt).
1091
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001092- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1093 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1094
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001095- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1096 default sort).
1097
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001098- Added global runctx function to profile module
1099
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001100- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1101
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001102- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1103
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001104- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1105
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001106- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001107 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1108 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1109 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1110 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1111 accordingly.
1112
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001113- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1114 decoding standards.
1115
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001116- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1117 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1118 called for all requests.
1119
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001120- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1121 they are passed to the compiler.
1122
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001123- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1124 indent, width and depth.
1125
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001126- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1127 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1128
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001129- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1130 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1131
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001132- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1133
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001134- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1135
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001136- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1137
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001138- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1139 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1140
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001141- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001142 for better performance.
1143
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001144- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001145
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001146- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1147 a string).
1148
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001149- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1150
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001151- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1152
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001153- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1154
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001155- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1156
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001157- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1158 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1159 list of fieldnames.
1160
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001161- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1162 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1163
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001164- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1165
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001166- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1167 empty lists.
1168
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001169- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1170 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1171 and shelves.
1172
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001173- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1174 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1175
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001176- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001177 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1178 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001179
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001180- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1181 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001182 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001183
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001184- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001185 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1186 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1187
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001188- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1189 and removed in Py2.4.
1190
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001191- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1192
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001193- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1194
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001195Tools/Demos
1196-----------
1197
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001198- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1199 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1200
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001201- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1202
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001203- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1204 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1205 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1206 destination in situations where both files are given.
1207
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001208- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1209 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1210 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1211 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1212
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001213- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1214
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001215- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1216 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1217 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1218 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1219 now.
1220
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001221- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1222 in effect
1223
1224- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1225 C-c C-h
1226
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001227- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1228 -d option was given.
1229
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001230Build
1231-----
1232
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001233- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1234 build under OS X.
1235
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001236- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1237 --enable-profiling.
1238
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001239- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1240 is configured --with-tsc.
1241
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001242- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1243 on AMD64.
1244
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001245- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1246 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1247
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001248- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1249 removed.
1250
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001251- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1252 supported (see PEP 11).
1253
1254- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1255
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001256- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1257
1258- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1259 (see PEP 11).
1260
1261- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1262 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1263
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001264C API
1265-----
1266
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001267- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1268 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1269 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1270
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001271- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1272 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1273 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1274 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1275
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001276- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1277 generator objects.
1278
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001279- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1280 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001281 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1282 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001283
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001284- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1285 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1286
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001287- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1288 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1289 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1290 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1291 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1292
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001293- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1294 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1295 about 10% faster.
1296
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001297- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1298 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1299
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001300- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1301 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1302 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1303 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1304
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001305Windows
1306-------
1307
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001308- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1309 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1310 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1311 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1312
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001313- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1314 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1315 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1316
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001317
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001318What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1319===============================
1320
1321*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1322
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001323IDLE
1324----
1325
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001326- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1327 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1328 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1329 context-menu actions.
1330
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001331- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1332 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1333 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1334 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1335 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1336 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1337 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1338 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1339 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1340
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001341
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001342What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1343=============================================
1344
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001345*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001346
1347Core and builtins
1348-----------------
1349
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001350- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001351 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001352 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1353
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001354Extension modules
1355-----------------
1356
1357- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1358 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1359 than once. This has been fixed.
1360
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001361- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1362 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1363 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1364 call.
1365
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001366- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1367
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001368Library
1369-------
1370
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001371- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1372 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1373
1374- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1375 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1376 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1377 restored.
1378
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001379IDLE
1380----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001381
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001382- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001383
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001384Build
1385-----
1386
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001387- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1388 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1389
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001390C API
1391-----
1392
1393Windows
1394-------
1395
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001396- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1397 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1398
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001399- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1400
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001401Mac
1402---
1403
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001404- Various fixes to pimp.
1405
1406- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1407
1408- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1409 more problems than it solves.
1410
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001411
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001412What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1413=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001414
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001415*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1416
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001417Core and builtins
1418-----------------
1419
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001420- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1421 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1422
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001423- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1424 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001425 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001426
1427- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1428 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1429 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001430 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001431
1432- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1433 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001434
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001435- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1436 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1437 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1438
1439- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001440 770247.
1441
1442- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001443
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001444Extension modules
1445-----------------
1446
1447- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1448 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1449
1450- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1451
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001452- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1453
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001454- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1455 contained within the _strptime module.
1456
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001457- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1458 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1459
1460- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001461 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1462
1463- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1464 the find_class attribute, if present.
1465
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001466- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001467
1468 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1469 (SF bug 763298).
1470
1471 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001472 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1473 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1474 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001475
1476 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1477
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001478Library
1479-------
1480
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001481- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1482
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001483- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1484 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1485 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1486 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1487 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1488 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1489 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1490 or Tester().
1491
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001492- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1493 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1494 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1495 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1496 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1497 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1498 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1499 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1500 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001501
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001502 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001503
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001504- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1505 weren't before was an oversight.
1506
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001507- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1508 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1509
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001510- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1511 when there are no lines.
1512
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001513- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1514 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1515
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001516- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1517 to child processes.
1518
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001519- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1520
1521- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1522
1523- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1524 xmlrpclib.
1525
1526- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1527 responses.
1528
1529- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1530 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1531
1532- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1533 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1534 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1535
1536- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1537 used as patterns.
1538
1539- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1540 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1541 than Tk 8.3.
1542
1543- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1544
1545- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001546
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001547Tools/Demos
1548-----------
1549
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001550- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1551
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001552- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1553
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001554- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001555
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001556Build
1557-----
1558
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001559- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1560
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001561- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1562
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001563- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1564 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001565
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001566- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1567 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1568 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001569
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001570C API
1571-----
1572
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001573- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1574 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1575
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001576Windows
1577-------
1578
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001579- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1580 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1581 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1582 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1583 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1584 Python exception ::
1585
1586 thread.error: can't start new thread
1587
1588 is raised now.
1589
1590- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1591 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1592 instead of from DLL teardown.
1593
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001594Mac
1595---
1596
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001597- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001598 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001599 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1600 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1601 the executable in the bundle.
1602
1603- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001604
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001605- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1606
1607- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1608 on Panther.
1609
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001610What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1611================================
1612
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001613*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001614
1615Core and builtins
1616-----------------
1617
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001618- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1619 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1620 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1621 with the -i option.
1622
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001623- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1624 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1625
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001626- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1627 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1628
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001629- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1630 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1631 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1632 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1633 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1634 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1635 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1636 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1637 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1638 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1639 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1640 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1641 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001642
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001643- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1644 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1645 embedded in a lambda expression.
1646
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001647- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1648 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1649 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1650 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1651 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1652
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001653- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1654 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1655 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1656
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001657- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1658 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1659
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001660- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1661 It's writable again.
1662
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001663- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1664 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1665 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001666 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001667
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001668- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1669 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1670 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1671
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001672Extension modules
1673-----------------
1674
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001675- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1676 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1677
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001678- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1679 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1680 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1681 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1682
1683- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1684 collection.
1685
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001686- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1687 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1688 unique within a single program run.
1689
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001690- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1691 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1692
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001693- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1694 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1695
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001696- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1697 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001698
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001699- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1700
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001701- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1702 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1703
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001704- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1705 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1706 for many BSD-derived systems.
1707
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001708
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001709Library
1710-------
1711
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001712- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1713 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1714 primary ones:
1715
1716 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1717 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1718 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1719
1720 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1721 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1722 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1723 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1724 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1725 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1726
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001727- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1728 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1729 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1730 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1731 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1732 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1733 argument.
1734
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001735- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1736 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1737 in the archive.
1738
1739- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1740 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1741
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001742- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1743 569574).
1744
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001745- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1746 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1747 no more.
1748
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001749- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1750 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1751 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1752 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1753 code coverage.
1754
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001755- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1756 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1757 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001758 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1759 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001760
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001761- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1762 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1763 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001764 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001765
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001766- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1767
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001768- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1769 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1770 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1771 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1772
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001773- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1774 handling.
1775
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001776- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1777 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1778
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001779- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1780 in socket.py.
1781
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001782- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1783
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001784- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1785 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1786 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1787 opener with proxy support.
1788
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001789- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1790
1791- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1792
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001793Tools/Demos
1794-----------
1795
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001796- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1797
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001798- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1799
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001800- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1801 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001802
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001803- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1804 files.
1805
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001806Build
1807-----
1808
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001809- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001810 different root directory.
1811
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001812C API
1813-----
1814
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001815- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1816 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1817 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1818 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1819 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1820 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1821 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1822 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1823 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1824 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1825
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001826- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1827 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1828 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1829 from Python.
1830
1831
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001832New platforms
1833-------------
1834
1835None this time.
1836
1837Tests
1838-----
1839
1840- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1841 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1842
1843Windows
1844-------
1845
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001846- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1847
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001848- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1849 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1850 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1851 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1852 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1853 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1854 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1855 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1856 that's what it's for.
1857
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001858Mac
1859---
1860
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001861- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1862 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1863 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1864 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001865- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1866 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1867- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001868
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001869SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1870------------------------------------
1871
1872430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1873598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1874622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1875661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1876683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1877697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1878713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1879724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1880727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1881729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1882730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1883731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1884732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1885733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1886735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1887740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1888744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1889745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1890747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1891749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1892751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
1893753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
1894755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
1895757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
1896760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
1897
1898
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001899What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
1900================================
1901
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00001902*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001903
1904Core and builtins
1905-----------------
1906
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00001907- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
1908 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
1909
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00001910- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
1911 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
1912 and cannot be strings).
1913
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00001914- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
1915 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
1916 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
1917 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
1918
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00001919- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
1920 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
1921 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
1922 Python itself.
1923
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00001924- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
1925 the referenced object, if it has one.
1926
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00001927- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
1928 the thread started at
1929 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
1930
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00001931- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
1932 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
1933 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
1934 placed on a list index.
1935
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00001936- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
1937 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
1938 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
1939 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
1940
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001941- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
1942 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
1943 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
1944 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
1945 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
1946 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
1947 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
1948
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00001949- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
1950 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
1951 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
1952 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
1953 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
1954
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00001955- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
1956 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00001957
1958- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
1959 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
1960 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
1961 #693195.)
1962
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00001963- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
1964 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001965
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001966- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00001967 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001968 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
1969 interpreter executions, would fail.
1970
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001971- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00001972 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00001973 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001974
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001975Extension modules
1976-----------------
1977
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00001978- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
1979 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
1980 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
1981 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
1982
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00001983- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
1984 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
1985
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00001986- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
1987 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
1988 and Greg Chapman.)
1989
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001990- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
1991 recursively.
1992
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00001993- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00001994 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
1995 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
1996 leaks.
1997
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00001998- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
1999
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002000- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2001 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2002 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2003 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2004 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2005 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2006 #705836.
2007
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002008- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002009 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2010
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002011- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2012 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2013 See SF bug #692416.
2014
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002015- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2016 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2017
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002018- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2019 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2020 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002021
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002022- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002023 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2024 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2025
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002026- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2027 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2028 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2029 timeouts to work properly.
2030
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002031Library
2032-------
2033
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002034- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2035 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2036 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2037 future release.
2038
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002039- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2040 for querying platform dependent features.
2041
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002042- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002043
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002044- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2045 pickle protocol versions.
2046
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002047- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2048 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2049 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2050
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002051- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2052
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002053- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2054 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2055 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2056 modules.
2057
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002058- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2059 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2060 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2061
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002062- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2063 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2064
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002065- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2066 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2067 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2068
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002069- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002070 MS Office extensions.
2071
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002072- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2073 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2074
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002075- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2076 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2077
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002078- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2079 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2080 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2081 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2082 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2083 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2084
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002085- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2086 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2087 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002088
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002089- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2090 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2091 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2092
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002093- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2094
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002095- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2096 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2097 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2098
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002099Tools/Demos
2100-----------
2101
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002102- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2103 See the module docstring for details.
2104
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002105Build
2106-----
2107
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002108- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2109 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002110
2111C API
2112-----
2113
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002114- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2115
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002116- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2117 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2118 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2119
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002120- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2121 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002122
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002123 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2124 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2125 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002126
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002127- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002128 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2129
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002130- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2131 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2132 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002133
2134New platforms
2135-------------
2136
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002137None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002138
2139Tests
2140-----
2141
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002142- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2143 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002144
2145Windows
2146-------
2147
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002148- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2149 function.
2150
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002151- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2152 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002153
2154Mac
2155---
2156
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002157- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2158 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002159
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002160- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2161 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002162
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002163- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2164 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2165 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002166
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002167- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002168 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2169 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002170
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002171- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2172 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002173
2174
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002175What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2176=================================
2177
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002178*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002179
2180Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002181-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002182
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002183- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2184 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2185 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2186
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002187- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2188 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2189 (SF patch #664376.)
2190
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002191- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2192 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2193 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2194 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2195 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2196 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002197 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002198
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002199- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2200 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2201 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2202 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002203 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002204
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002205- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2206 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2207 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2208 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2209 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2210 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2211 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2212 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2213 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2214 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2215 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2216
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002217- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2218 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2219 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2220 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2221 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2222 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2223
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002224- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2225 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2226
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002227- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2228 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2229 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2230 case.)
2231
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002232- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2233 passed as unicode strings.
2234
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002235- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2236 See SF bug #683467.
2237
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002238- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2239 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2240
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002241- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2242
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002243- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2244
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002245- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2246 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2247 arguments.
2248
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002249- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2250 See SF bug #667147.
2251
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002252- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002253 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002254 See SF bug #676155.
2255
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002256- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002257 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002258 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2259 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2260 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2261 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2262 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2263 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002264
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002265Extension modules
2266-----------------
2267
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002268- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2269 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2270 tp_as_number pointer.
2271
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002272- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2273 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2274 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2275 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2276 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2277
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002278- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2279
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002280- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2281
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002282- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002283 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002284 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2285 patch #678531.)
2286
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002287- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2288 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2289
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002290- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2291 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2292
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002293- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2294
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002295- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2296 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2297 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2298
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002299- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2300
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002301- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2302 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2303
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002304- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002305
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002306- datetime changes:
2307
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002308 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2309
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002310 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2311 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2312 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2313 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2314 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2315 now.
2316
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002317 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002318 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2319 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002320
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002321 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002322 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002323 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2324 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2325 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2326 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002327
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002328 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2329 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2330 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002331 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2332
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002333 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2334 by a later example coded by Guido.
2335
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002336 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002337 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2338 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2339 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002340 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2341 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2342
2343 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2344 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2345 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2346 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2347 tzinfo subclass instance.
2348
2349 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2350 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2351 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2352 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2353 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2354 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2355 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2356 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002357
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002358 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2359 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2360 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2361 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2362 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002363 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2364
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002365 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002366
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002367 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2368 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2369 as a naive datetime object.
2370
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002371 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2372 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2373 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2374
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002375 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2376 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2377 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2378 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2379 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2380 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2381 comparison.
2382
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002383 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2384 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2385 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2386 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002387 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002388
2389 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002390
2391 and ::
2392
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002393 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2394
2395 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2396 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2397 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2398 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2399
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002400 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2401 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2402 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2403 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2404 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2405
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002406 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2407 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002408 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2409 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002410
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002411Library
2412-------
2413
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002414- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2415 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2416
2417- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2418 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2419 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2420 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2421 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2422 See PEP 307 for details.
2423
2424- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2425 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2426
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002427- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2428 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002429 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002430 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2431 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002432 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002433
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002434- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2435 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2436
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002437- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2438 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2439 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2440
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002441- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2442
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002443- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2444 exception.
2445
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002446- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2447 class.
2448
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002449- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2450 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2451 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2452
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002453- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2454 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2455
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002456- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002457 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2458 See SF bug #659228.
2459
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002460- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2461 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2462 See SF patch #651082.
2463
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002464- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002465
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002466- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2467 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2468
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002469- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002470 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002471
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002472- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2473 DOS paths from other platforms.
2474
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002475Tools/Demos
2476-----------
2477
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002478- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2479 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2480 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2481 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2482 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2483 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2484 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2485 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2486 example:
2487
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002488 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2489 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002490
2491 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2492
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002493
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002494Build
2495-----
2496
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002497- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2498 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2499 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002500 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2501
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002502 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2503
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002504- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2505 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2506 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2507 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2508 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2509 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2510 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2511 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2512 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2513
2514- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2515 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2516 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2517 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2518
2519- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2520 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2521
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002522C API
2523-----
2524
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002525- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2526 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002527
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002528- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2529 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2530 tp_as_number pointer.
2531
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002532- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2533 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2534 (SF #681367)
2535
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002536- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2537 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2538 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2539 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002540
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002541Tests
2542-----
2543
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002544- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002545 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2546 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2547 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2548 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2549 pydoc.)
2550
2551- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2552
2553- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002554
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002555Windows
2556-------
2557
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002558- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2559 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2560 time).
2561
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002562- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2563 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2564
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002565- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2566 release without strong cryptography.
2567
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002568- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002569 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002570
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002571- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2572 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2573
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002574Mac
2575---
2576
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002577- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2578 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002579
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002580- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2581 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2582 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002583
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002584- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2585 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002586
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002587- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2588 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2589 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2590 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002591
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002592- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002593 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2594 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2595 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002596
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002597
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002598What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002599=================================
2600
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002601*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002602
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002603Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002604--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002605
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002606- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2607
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002608- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2609 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002610 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002611 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002612 a different meaning than before.
2613
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002614- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002615 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002616 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002617
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002618- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002619 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002620 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002621
2622- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2623 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2624 and deallocation.
2625
2626- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2627 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2628
2629- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2630 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2631 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2632 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2633 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2634
2635- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2636 now detected by the garbage collector.
2637
2638- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2639 [SF bug 519621]
2640
2641- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2642 identifier.
2643
2644- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2645 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2646 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2647 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2648 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2649 [SF bug 563060]
2650
2651- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2652 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2653 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2654 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2655 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2656
2657- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2658 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2659 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2660
2661- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2662
2663- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2664 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2665 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2666 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2667 state of the slots would be lost.)
2668
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002669Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002670-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002671
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002672- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002673 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2674 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2675 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2676 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002677 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2678 Jython 2.1.
2679
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002680- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002681 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002682 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2683 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2684 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2685 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2686 these, see PEP 302.
2687
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002688- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2689 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2690 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2691
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002692- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2693 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2694 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2695
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002696- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2697 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2698 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2699
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002700- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2701 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2702 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2703 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2704 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2705 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2706 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2707 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2708 releases or implementations.
2709
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002710- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002711 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2712 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002713
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002714- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2715 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2716
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002717- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2718 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2719 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2720
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002721- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2722 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2723
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002724- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2725 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002726 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2727 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002728
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002729- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2730 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2731 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2732 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2733 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2734
2735 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2736 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2737 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2738 pattern.
2739
2740 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2741 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2742 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2743 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2744
2745 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2746 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2747 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2748 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2749 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2750 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2751
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002752- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2753 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2754 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2755 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2756 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2757 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2758 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2759 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002760
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002761- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2762 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2763 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2764 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2765 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002766 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2767 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2768 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2769 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2770 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2771 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2772 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002773
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002774- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2775 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2776
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002777- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2778 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2779 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2780 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2781 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2782 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2783 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2784 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2785 to Zack Weinberg!
2786
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002787- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2788 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2789 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2790 type. This has been fixed now.
2791
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002792- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2793 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2794 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2795
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002796- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2797 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2798 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2799 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2800 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2801 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2802 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2803 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002804 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002805
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002806- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2807 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2808 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002809
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002810- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2811 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2812 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2813 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2814 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2815 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2816 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2817 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002818 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002819 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2820 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2821
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002822- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2823 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2824 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2825 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2826 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2827 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2828 this.)
2829
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002830- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2831 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002832 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002833 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002834 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2835 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002836 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2837 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002838
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002839- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2840 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2841 currently running.
2842
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002843- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2844 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2845 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2846 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2847
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002848- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2849 as directory names.
2850
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002851- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2852 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2853
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002854- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2855 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2856
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002857- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002858 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2859 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002860
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002861- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2862 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2863 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2864 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2865 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2866
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002867- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2868 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2869 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2870 removed.
2871
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002872- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2873 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2874 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2875
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002876- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2877 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2878 to __debug__.
2879
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002880- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2881 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2882 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2883
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002884- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2885 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2886 deprecated now.
2887
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002888- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2889 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2890 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002891
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002892- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
2893 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
2894 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
2895 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
2896 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00002897
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00002898- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
2899 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
2900
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002901- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
2902 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
2903 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002904 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002905 is backward compatible.
2906
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00002907- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
2908 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
2909 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
2910 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
2911 could access a pointer to freed memory.
2912
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00002913- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
2914 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
2915 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
2916 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
2917 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
2918 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002919
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00002920- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
2921 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
2922
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002923- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
2924 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
2925
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002926- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
2927 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
2928 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
2929 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
2930 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
2931
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00002932- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
2933 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
2934 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
2935
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002936- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00002937 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
2938
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00002939- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
2940 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
2941 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00002942
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00002943- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
2944 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
2945
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00002946- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
2947 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
2948 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
2949
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00002950- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
2951
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002952Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002953-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002954
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00002955- Added three operators to the operator module:
2956 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
2957 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
2958 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
2959
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00002960- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
2961
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002962- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
2963 archives.
2964
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002965- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
2966 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
2967 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
2968
2969 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
2970
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002971- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
2972 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
2973 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00002974 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002975
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00002976- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
2977 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
2978 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
2979 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002980 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
2981 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
2982 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
2983 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00002984
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00002985- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
2986 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00002987
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00002988- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
2989
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00002990- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
2991 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
2992
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00002993- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
2994 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
2995 supported.
2996
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00002997- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
2998
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00002999- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3000 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003001
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003002- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3003 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3004
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003005- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3006
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003007- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3008 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3009
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003010- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3011 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3012 functions but callable type objects.
3013
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003014- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003015 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003016 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003017
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003018- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3019 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003020
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003021- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3022 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003023
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003024- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3025 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3026 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3027 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3028
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003029- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3030 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003031
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003032- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3033 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3034 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3035 and __imul__.
3036
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003037- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003038 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3039 is called.
3040
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003041- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3042 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3043 interpreter was compiled.
3044
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003045- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3046 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3047 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003048 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003049 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3050 1, not 2.
3051
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003052- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3053 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3054 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3055 limit.
3056
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003057- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3058 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3059 bug #623464.
3060
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003061- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3062 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3063 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3064 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3065
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003066Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003067-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003068
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003069- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3070
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003071- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3072 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3073 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3074 with Python 2.3a2.
3075
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003076- os.path exposes getctime.
3077
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003078- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003079 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003080 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003081 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003082 unit tests of floating point results.
3083
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003084- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3085 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3086 has been increased.
3087
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003088- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3089 executed.
3090
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003091- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3092 postinstallation script.
3093
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003094- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3095 test the current module.
3096
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003097- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003098 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3099 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3100 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3101 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3102
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003103- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003104 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003105 Ward's Optik package.
3106
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003107- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3108 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3109 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3110 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3111
3112- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3113 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003114 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003115
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003116- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3117 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3118 shelf are binary pickles.
3119
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003120- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3121 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3122
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003123- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3124 modules are iterators now.
3125
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003126- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3127 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3128 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3129 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3130 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3131 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003132
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003133- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3134 with their entity value.
3135
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003136- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3137
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003138- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3139 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003140
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003141- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3142 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003143 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003144
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003145- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3146 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3147 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3148 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3149 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3150 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3151 main():
3152
3153 import locale
3154 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3155
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003156- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3157 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3158
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003159- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3160 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3161 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3162 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3163 to the new standard.
3164
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003165- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3166 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3167 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3168 an extension to the database.
3169
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003170- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3171 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3172 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3173 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003174 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003175
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003176- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003177 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003178
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003179- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3180 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3181 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3182 bounded integers.
3183
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003184- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3185 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3186 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3187 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3188 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3189 in existence.
3190
3191 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3192 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3193 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3194 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3195 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3196 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3197
3198 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3199 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3200 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3201 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3202
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003203- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3204 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3205 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3206
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003207- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3208
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003209- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3210 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3211 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3212 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3213
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003214- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3215 argument.
3216
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003217- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3218 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3219 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3220 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3221 [SF patch 560794].
3222
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003223- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3224 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3225 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003226 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3227 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3228 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003229
3230- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3231 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003232
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003233- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3234 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3235 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3236 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003237
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003238- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3239 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3240 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3241 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3242 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3243
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003244- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003245
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003246- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3247
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003248- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3249 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3250 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3251 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3252 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3253 identical to None.
3254
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003255- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3256 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3257 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3258 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3259 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3260 results now.
3261
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003262- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3263 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3264
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003265- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3266 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3267 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3268 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3269 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3270 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3271 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3272 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3273
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003274- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3275
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003276- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3277 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3278
3279- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3280 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3281 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3282 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3283 and other systems.
3284
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003285- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3286 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3287 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3288 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 +00003289 work well with these.
3290
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003291- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3292
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003293- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003294 connections.
3295
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003296- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3297 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3298 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3299
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003300- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3301 sets
3302
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003303- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3304 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3305 name.
3306
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003307- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3308 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3309 passed in.
3310
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003311- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003312 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003313 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3314 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003315
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003316- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3317
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003318- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3319
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003320- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3321 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3322 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3323
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003324- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3325 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3326 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3327 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003328 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003329
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003330- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003331 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003332 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003333
3334- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3335 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3336 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3337
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003338- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003339 the value of its expression argument.
3340
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003341- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3342 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3343 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3344
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003345- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3346 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3347 skipstone browser was included.
3348
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003349- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3350 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3351
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003352Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003353-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003354
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003355- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3356 names in addition to accepting file names.
3357
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003358- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3359 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3360 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3361 still used and useful.)
3362
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003363- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3364 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3365 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3366 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003367
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003368- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3369 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3370 the generated binary.
3371
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003372Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003373-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003374
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003375- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3376
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003377- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3378 except in the hands of experts.
3379
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003380- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003381 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3382 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3383 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003384
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003385- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3386 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3387 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3388 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3389 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3390 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3391 builds.
3392
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003393- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3394 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3395 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3396 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3397 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3398 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3399 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3400 new type.
3401
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003402- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003403
3404 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3405 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3406 positive infinities.
3407
3408 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3409 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3410 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3411 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3412 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3413 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3414 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3415
3416 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3417
3418 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3419
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003420- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3421 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3422 size of the executable.
3423
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003424- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3425 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3426 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3427 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003428
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003429- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3430
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003431- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3432 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3433 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003434
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003435- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3436 well as Unix.
3437
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003438- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3439 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3440 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3441 modules in the README file for details.
3442
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003443C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003444-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003445
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003446- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3447 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003448 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003449 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003450 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003451
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003452- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3453 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3454 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3455 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3456 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3457 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003458 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003459 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3460 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3461 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3462 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3463 aligned.)
3464
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003465- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3466 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3467 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3468
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003469- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3470 level.
3471
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003472- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3473 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3474 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3475 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3476 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3477
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003478- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3479 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3480 code.
3481
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003482- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3483 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3484 adjusting for negative indices.
3485
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003486- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3487 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3488 object.
3489
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003490- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3491 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3492 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3493
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003494- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3495 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003496
3497- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3498
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003499- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3500 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3501 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3502 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3503
3504- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3505
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003506- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003507
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003508- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003509 without going through the buffer API.
3510
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003511- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003512
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003513- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3514 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3515 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3516 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3517
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003518- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3519 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3520
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003521- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003522 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3523
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003524New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003525-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003526
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003527- OpenVMS is now supported.
3528
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003529- AtheOS is now supported.
3530
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003531- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3532
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003533- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3534
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003535Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003536-----
3537
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003538- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3539 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3540 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003541
3542Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003543-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003544
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003545- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3546 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3547 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3548 bugs.
3549 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003550 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003551 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3552 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003553 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003554
3555- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003556 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003557
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003558- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3559 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3560
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003561- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3562 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003563 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003564 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3565
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003566- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3567 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3568 use files" uninstall option).
3569
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003570- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3571
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003572- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3573 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3574
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003575- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3576 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3577 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3578
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003579- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3580 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3581 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3582 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3583 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003584 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3585 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3586 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003587
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003588- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003589 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003590 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3591 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3592 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3593 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3594 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3595 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3596 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3597 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3598 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3599 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3600 work around.
3601
3602- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3603 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3604 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3605 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3606 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3607 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3608 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3609 specified with O_CREAT too).
3610
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003611Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003612----
3613
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003614- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003615
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003616- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3617 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3618 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3619
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003620- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3621 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3622 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3623
3624- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3625 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3626 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3627 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3628 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3629 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3630 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3631 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003632
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003633- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3634 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3635 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003636
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003637- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3638 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3639 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3640 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3641 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003642
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003643- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3644 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3645 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003646
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003647- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3648 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003649
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003650- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3651 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3652 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3653 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3654 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003655
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003656- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3657 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3658 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3659
3660- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3661 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3662 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003663
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003664- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3665 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3666 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3667 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003668 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003669
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003670- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3671 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003672
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003673- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3674 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003675
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003676- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003677 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003678 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3679 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003680
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003681
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003682What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003683===============================
3684
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003685*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3686
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003687Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003688--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003689
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003690- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3691 with a custom metaclass.
3692
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003693Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003694-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003695
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003696- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3697 are proxies.
3698
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003699Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003700-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003701
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003702- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3703 very short strings.
3704
3705- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3706 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3707 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3708 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3709 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3710
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003711Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003712-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003713
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003714- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3715 close or delete time).
3716
3717- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3718 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3719
3720- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3721
3722- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003723 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003724
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003725Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003726-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003727
3728Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003729-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003730
3731C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003732-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003733
3734New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003735-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003736
3737Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003738-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003739
3740Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003741-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003742
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003743- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3744
3745- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3746 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3747
3748- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3749 deleted at process exit time.
3750
3751- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3752 in backslash.
3753
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003754Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003755----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003756
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003757- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3758 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3759 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3760
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003761
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003762What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003763===========================
3764
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003765*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3766
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003767Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003768--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003769
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003770- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3771 been extensively updated. See
3772
3773 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3774
3775 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3776
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003777- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3778 deleted!
3779
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003780- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3781 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3782 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3783 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3784 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3785
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003786- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3787
3788 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3789 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3790
3791 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3792 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3793 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3794 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3795 supported anyway.
3796
3797 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3798 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3799
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003800- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3801 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3802 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3803 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3804 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003805
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003806- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3807 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3808 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3809
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003810Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003811-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003812
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003813- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3814 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3815 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3816 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3817 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3818 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003819 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3820 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3821 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3822 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003823
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003824- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3825 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3826 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3827
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003828Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003829-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003830
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003831- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3832
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003833Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003834-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003835
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003836- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3837 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3838 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3839 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3840 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3841 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3842
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003843- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3844
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003845- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3846
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003847- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3848
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003849- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3850 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3851 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3852
3853- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3854
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003855Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003856-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003857
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003858- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3859 off a search on Google.
3860
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003861Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003862-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003863
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003864- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3865 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3866 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3867 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3868 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3869 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3870 other platforms should do likewise.
3871
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003872- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3873 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3874 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3875
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003876C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003877-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003878
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003879- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3880 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3881 producing key-value pairs.
3882
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003883- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003884 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003885 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3886 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3887 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3888 previously went unchallenged.
3889
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003890New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003891-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003892
3893Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003894-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003895
3896Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003897-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003898
3899Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003900----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003901
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00003902- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
3903 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003904
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003905- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
3906 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
3907 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
3908 home.
3909
3910
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003911What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003912===========================
3913
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003914*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
3915
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003916Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003917--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003918
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003919- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
3920 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003921
3922 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003923 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003924
3925 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
3926 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003927 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003928 This needs to be documented.
3929
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00003930- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
3931 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
3932
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00003933- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
3934 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
3935 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
3936
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00003937- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
3938 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
3939
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003940- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
3941 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
3942 class forbids it).
3943
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00003944- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
3945 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
3946 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
3947
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003948- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
3949
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003950Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003951-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003952
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003953- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
3954 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003955 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003956
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003957- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
3958 (like 1 + '').
3959
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003960Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003961-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003962
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003963- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
3964 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
3965 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
3966 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003967 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003968 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
3969
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00003970- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
3971 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
3972 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
3973 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
3974
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003975- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
3976 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003977 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
3978 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
3979 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003980
3981- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
3982 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003983
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00003984- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
3985 bytes on its input.
3986
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003987Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003988-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003989
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003990- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00003991 convenience function.
3992
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003993- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
3994 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
3995 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003996 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
3997 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
3998 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
3999 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4000 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4001 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004002
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004003- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4004 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4005 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4006 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4007
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004008- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4009 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4010 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4011
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004012- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4013 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4014 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4015 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4016
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004017- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4018 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004019 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004020 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4021 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4022 new -l and -e options.
4023
4024- statcache is now deprecated.
4025
4026- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4027 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004028 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004029 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4030 time properly taken into account.
4031
4032- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4033 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4034 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4035 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4036
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004037Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004038-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004039
4040Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004041-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004042
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004043- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4044 is built with libdb3 if available.
4045
4046- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4047
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004048C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004049-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004050
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004051- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4052 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4053 PySequence_Size().
4054
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004055- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4056
4057- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4058 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4059 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4060
4061- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4062 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4063
4064- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4065 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4066
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004067New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004068-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004069
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004070- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4071 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4072
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004073- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4074 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4075
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004076- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4077
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004078Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004079-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004080
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004081- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4082 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4083
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004084Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004085-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004086
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004087Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004088----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004089
4090- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4091 removed completely in the next release.
4092
4093- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4094 OSX.
4095
4096- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4097 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4098
4099- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4100
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004101
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004102What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004103===========================
4104
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004105*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4106
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004107Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004108--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004109
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004110- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004111 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004112 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004113 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4114 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004115 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4116 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004117 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4118 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004119
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004120- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4121 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4122
4123- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4124 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4125
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004126Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004127-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004128
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004129- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4130 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4131 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4132 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4133 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4134 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4135 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4136 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4137
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004138- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4139 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4140 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4141 example).
4142
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004143- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004144 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004145 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004146 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004147
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004148- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4149 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4150 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004151 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004152
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004153- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4154 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4155 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4156 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4157 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4158 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4159
4160 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4161
4162 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4163
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004164Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004165-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004166
4167- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4168
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004169- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4170
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004171- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4172 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004173
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004174- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4175 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4176 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4177 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4178 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4179 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004180 attributes.
4181
4182- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4183 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4184 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004185
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004186- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4187 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4188 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004189
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004190- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4191 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4192 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004193 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4194 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4195
4196- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4197 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004198
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004199Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004200-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004201
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004202- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4203 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4204
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004205- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4206 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4207 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4208 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4209
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004210- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4211 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4212 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4213 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4214
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004215 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4216 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4217 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4218 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4219 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4220 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4221 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4222 without losing information).
4223
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004224- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004225 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4226 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4227 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4228 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4229 module).
4230
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004231 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004232 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4233 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4234 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4235 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004236
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004237- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004238 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4239 encoding.
4240
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004241- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4242 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4243
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004244- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004245 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4246
4247- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4248 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4249 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4250 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4251
4252- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4253
4254- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4255 ON, and OFF.
4256
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004257- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4258 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4259
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004260Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004261-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004262
4263- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4264 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4265 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004266
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004267- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4268 been added: -X and -E.
4269
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004270Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004271-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004272
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004273- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4274 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4275
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004276C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004277-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004278
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004279- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4280 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4281 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4282 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4283 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4284
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004285- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4286 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4287 as long) arguments.
4288
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004289- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4290 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4291 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4292 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4293 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4294 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4295
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004296- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4297 input.
4298
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004299New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004300-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004301
4302Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004303-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004304
4305Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004306-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004307
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004308- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4309 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4310 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4311
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004312- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4313 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4314 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004315 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004316
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004317 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4318 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4319 import signal
4320 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004321
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004322 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004323 while 1:
4324 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004325 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004326 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4327 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4328 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4329 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004330
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004331
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004332What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4333===========================
4334
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004335*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4336
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004337Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004338--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004339
4340- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4341 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4342 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4343
4344- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4345 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4346 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4347 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4348 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4349 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4350 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004351
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004352- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004353 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004354 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4355 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4356 associate a docstring with a property.
4357
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004358- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4359 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4360 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4361 other built-in object types.
4362
4363- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4364 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4365 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4366 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4367 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4368
4369- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4370 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4371
4372- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4373 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004374 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004375 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4376 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4377 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4378 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4379 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4380
4381- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4382 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4383 class.
4384
4385- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4386 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4387 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4388 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4389
4390- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4391 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4392 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4393 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4394
4395- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4396 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4397
4398- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4399 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4400 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4401 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4402 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004403 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004404 with the same value as s.
4405
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004406- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4407
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004408Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004409----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004410
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004411- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4412
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004413- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4414 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4415 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4416 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4417 objects.
4418
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004419- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4420 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004421 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4422 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4423
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004424- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4425 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4426 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4427
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004428Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004429-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004430
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004431- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4432 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4433 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4434 by the instances.
4435
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004436- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4437 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4438 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4439
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004440- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4441 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4442 before the entire comparison is complete.
4443
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004444- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4445 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4446 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4447
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004448- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4449 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4450 getwriter().
4451
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004452- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4453 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4454
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004455- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004456 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4457 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4458
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004459- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4460 iterable object.
4461
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004462- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4463 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004464
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004465- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4466 authentication.
4467
4468- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4469 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004470
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004471- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004472 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4473 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4474 a sample driver.)
4475
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004476Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004477-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004478
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004479- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4480 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4481 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4482 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4483 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4484 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4485 kernel has large file support.
4486
4487- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4488 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4489 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4490 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4491 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4492
4493- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4494 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4495 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4496
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004497C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004498-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004499
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004500- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4501 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4502
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004503New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004504-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004505
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004506- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4507 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4508
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004509Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004510-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004511
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004512- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4513 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4514 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4515 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4516 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4517
4518- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4519 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4520 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4521 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4522
4523- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4524 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4525
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004526Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004527-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004528
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004529- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004530 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4531 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004532
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004533
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004534What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4535===========================
4536
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004537*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4538
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004539Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004540----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004541
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004542- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4543 big to represent as a C double.
4544
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004545- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4546 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4547 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4548 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4549 restriction).
4550
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004551- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4552 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4553 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4554 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4555 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4556
4557 >>> dir([])
4558 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4559 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4560 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4561 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4562 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4563 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4564 'reverse', 'sort']
4565
4566 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4567
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004568- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004569 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4570 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4571 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4572 OverflowError exception.
4573
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004574- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004575 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004576 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4577 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4578 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4579 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4580 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004581 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004582 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4583 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4584
4585 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4586 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4587 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4588 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004589
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004590- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004591 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4592 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4593 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4594 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4595 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4596 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4597 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4598 once it is created.
4599
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004600- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4601 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4602 (key, value) pairs.
4603
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004604- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004605 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4606 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4607
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004608- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4609 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4610 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4611 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4612 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004613
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004614- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004615 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4616 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4617
4618 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4619
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004620- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004621 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4622
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004623Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004624-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004625
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004626- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004627 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4628 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004629
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004630- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4631 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4632 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4633 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4634 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4635 in this area anymore).
4636
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004637- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4638 threading.Timer.
4639
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004640- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4641 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4642
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004643- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004644 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4645
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004646- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004647 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4648 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4649 converted to Python longs.
4650
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004651- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004652 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4653
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004654- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4655 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4656 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4657
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004658Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004659-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004660
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004661- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4662 division operators as per PEP 238.
4663
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004664Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004665-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004666
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004667- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4668 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4669 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4670 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4671
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004672C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004673-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004674
4675- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004676
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004677- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4678 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004679 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004680
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004681 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4682 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004683 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004684 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004685
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004686- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004687 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4688 module:
4689
4690 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004691
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004692 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4693 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004694
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004695 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4696 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004697
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004698 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4699
4700 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4701
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004702- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004703 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4704 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4705 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004706
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004707New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004708-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004709
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004710- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4711 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4712 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4713 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4714 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004715
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004716Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004717-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004718
4719Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004720-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004721
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004722- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4723 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4724 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4725 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004726 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4727 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4728 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4729 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4730 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004731
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004732- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004733 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4734
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004735
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004736What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4737===========================
4738
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004739*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4740
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004741Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004742-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004743
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004744- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4745 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4746
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004747- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4748 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4749 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004750
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004751- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4752 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4753 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4754 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004755
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004756- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4757
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004758- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004759
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004760Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004761-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004762
4763- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004764 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004765 the module docstring for details.
4766
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004767Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004768-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004769
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004770- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004771 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4772 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4773 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004774
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004775- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4776 Nick Mathewson.
4777
4778Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004779----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004780
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004781- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4782 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4783 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4784 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4785 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4786 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4787 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4788 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4789
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004790- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4791 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4792 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4793 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4794
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004795- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4796 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4797 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4798 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4799 come a long way).
4800
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004801- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4802 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4803 write filters for these warnings).
4804
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004805- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4806 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4807 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4808 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4809 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4810
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004811- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4812 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4813 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4814 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4815 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4816 older distribution.
4817
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004818Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004819-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004820
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004821- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4822 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004823 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004824
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004825- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4826 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4827 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4828
4829- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4830
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004831- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4832
4833- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4834
4835- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4836
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004837- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004838
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004839- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4840
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004841New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004842-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004843
4844C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004845-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004846
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004847- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4848 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4849 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4850 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4851 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4852 against buffer overruns.
4853
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004854- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004855 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4856 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004857 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4858 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4859 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4860
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004861- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4862 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4863 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4864 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4865 deprecated.
4866
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004867Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004868-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004869
4870- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4871 relevant is found.
4872
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004873
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004874What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004875===========================
4876
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004877*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4878
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004879Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004880----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004881
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004882- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4883 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4884 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4885 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4886 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4887 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4888 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4889 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004890 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004891 repaired.
4892
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004893- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00004894 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004895 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
4896 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
4897 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
4898 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
4899 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
4900 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
4901 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
4902 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
4903
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00004904- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
4905 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
4906 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
4907 leading BMO character).
4908
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004909- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
4910 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
4911 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
4912
4913 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
4914 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
4915 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004916
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004917 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
4918 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
4919 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
4920 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
4921 for various simple to use conversions.
4922
4923 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
4924 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
4925
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004926 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4927 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
4928 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
4929 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
4930 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4931 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
4932 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4933 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
4934 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4935 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
4936 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4937 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
4938 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4939 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
4940 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004941
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004942- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
4943 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
4944 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004945 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004946 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004947
4948 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004949 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
4950 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
4951 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
4952 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
4953 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004954 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
4955 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004956
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004957 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
4958 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
4959 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004960 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004961
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00004962- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
4963 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
4964 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
4965 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
4966 floating arithmetic,
4967
4968 x = 9007199254740992.0
4969 print long(x)
4970
4971 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
4972 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
4973 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
4974 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
4975 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
4976 functions are of good quality).
4977
4978 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
4979 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
4980 algorithms to break.
4981
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00004982- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
4983 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
4984 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
4985 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
4986 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
4987 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
4988 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
4989 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
4990 order.
4991
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004992- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
4993 operation along the most common code paths.
4994
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004995- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
4996 the same as dict.has_key(x).
4997
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00004998- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
4999 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5000 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5001 {}.update(UserDict())
5002
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005003- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5004 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5005 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5006 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5007 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5008 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5009 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5010 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5011
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005012- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005013 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005014
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005015 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005016 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5017 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005018 join() method of strings
5019 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005020 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5021 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005022 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005023 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005024
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005025- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5026 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5027
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005028- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5029 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5030
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005031- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5032 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5033 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5034 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5035
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005036- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5037 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005038 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005039 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5040 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005041
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005042- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5043
5044
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005045Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005046-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005047
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005048- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005049 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005050 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5051 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5052
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005053- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5054 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5055
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005056- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5057 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5058 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5059 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5060
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005061- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5062 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5063 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5064
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005065- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5066
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005067- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5068
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005069- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5070 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5071 that are still imported into string.py).
5072
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005073- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5074
5075- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5076 Now it does.
5077
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005078- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5079
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005080- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5081 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5082 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5083 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5084 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005085 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5086 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005087
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005088- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5089 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5090 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5091 'help(object)'.
5092
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005093Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005094-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005095
5096- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005097 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005098 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5099 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5100
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005101- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005102 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5103 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005104
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005105C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005106-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005107
5108- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5109 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005110
5111----
5112
5113**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**