blob: d4aaa744a643a057a896191c20d9c6d05d277541 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000015- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
16 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
17 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
18
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000019- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
20 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000021 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000022
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000023- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
24 now encodes backslash correctly.
25
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000026- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
27
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000028- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
29 and long longs.
30
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000031- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
32 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
33 message in this case.
34
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000035- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
36 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
37 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
38 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
39 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
40
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000041- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000042
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000043- Speed up some Unicode operations.
44
45- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
46
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000047- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000048 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
49
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000050- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
51
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000052- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
53 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
54
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000055- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
56
57- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
58
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000059- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
60 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
61 was empty.
62
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000063- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
64 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
65
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000066- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000067 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000068
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000069- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
70 codes.
71
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000072- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
73 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
74 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
75
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000076- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
77 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
78
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000079- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000080 (fixes bug #1119418).
81
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000082- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
83
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000084- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
85 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
86
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000087- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
88 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
89 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
90
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000091- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
92
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000093- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
94 reference counts in some error exit cases.
95
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000096- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
97 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
98 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
99 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
100 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
101 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
102 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
103 realloc.
104
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000105- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
106 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
107
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000108- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
109 like their int counterparts.
110
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000111- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
112 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
113 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
114 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
115 for a longer write-up of the problem).
116
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000117- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
118 serializing floats.
119
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000120- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
121 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
122 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
123
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000124- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
125 278.
126
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000127- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
128 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
129 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
130 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000131 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000132 PyNumber_*().
133 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
134
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000135- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
136 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
137 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
138 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
139
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000140- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
141 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
142 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
143 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
144 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
145
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000146- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
147 disabled caused a crash.
148
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000149- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
150 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
151
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000152- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000153 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
154
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000155- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
156
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000157- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000158 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
159 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
160 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000161
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000162- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
163
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000164- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
165 returning None.
166
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000167- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000168 ('\') with a specific error message.
169
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000170- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
171
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000172- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
173 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
174
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000175- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000176 an ferror() call.
177
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000178- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
179 list.sort().
180
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000181- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
182 (2+3) --> (5).
183
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000184- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
185
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000186- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
187 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000188
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000189- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
190 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
191 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
192
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000193- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
194 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
195 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
196
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000197Extension Modules
198-----------------
199
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000200- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
201 problem on AIX.
202
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000203- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
204
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000205- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
206
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000207- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
208
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000209- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
210 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
211
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000212- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
213
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000214- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
215 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
216
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000217- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
218
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000219- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
220 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
221
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000222- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
223 returns in cStringIO.c.
224
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000225- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
226 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
227
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000228- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
229
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000230- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
231
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000232- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
233 the file system encoding.
234
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000235- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
236 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000237
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000238- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
239
240- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000241 line without newlines.
242
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000243- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
244 on Windows.
245
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000246- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000247 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
248
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000249- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
250 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
251 for large or negative values.
252
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000253- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000254 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000255
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000256- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
257
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000258- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
259 if available on the platform.
260
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000261- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
262 available on the platform.
263
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000264- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
265 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
266
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000267- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
268
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000269- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
270 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
271 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
272
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000273- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
274
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000275- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
276 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
277
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000278- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000279 file size.
280
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000281- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
282
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000283- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
284 {remove_history,replace_history}
285
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000286- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
287 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000288
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000289- stat_float_times is now True.
290
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000291- array.array objects are now picklable.
292
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000293- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
294 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
295
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000296- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
297 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
298 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
299
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000300- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
301 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000302
303Library
304-------
305
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000306- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000307 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
308 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
309 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
310 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
311
312 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
313 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
314 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
315 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
316 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000317
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000318- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
319 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
320 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
321
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000322- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
323
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000324- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
325
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000326- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
327 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
328 illegal argument)
329
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000330- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
331 is an error in the format string.
332
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000333- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
334
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000335- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000336 "parent" argument.
337
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000338- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
339 for padding.
340
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000341- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
342 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
343
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000344- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
345 to get the correct encoding.
346
347- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
348 languages.
349
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000350- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
351
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000352- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
353
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000354- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
355
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000356- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
357 functionality.
358
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000359- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
360
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000361- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
362 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
363
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000364- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
365 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
366 match the Content-Length header.
367
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000368- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
369
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000370- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
371 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000372 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000373
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000374- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
375
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000376- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
377
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000378- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
379 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
380
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000381- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
382 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
383 Tkdnd.
384
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000385- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
386 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
387
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000388- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
389 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
390
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000391- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000392 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
393
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000394- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
395 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
396
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000397- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
398 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
399
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000400- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000401 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000402
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000403- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
404
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000405- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
406 error messages.
407
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000408- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
409
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000410- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
411 Bug #1224621.
412
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000413- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
414 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
415 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
416 terminates by raising StopIteration.
417
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000418- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
419
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000420- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
421 component of the path.
422
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000423- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
424 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
425 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
426 class at all.
427
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000428- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
429 files to PyPI.
430
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000431- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
432 them to PyPI.
433
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000434- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
435 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
436 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
437 work as expected.
438
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000439- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
440 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
441
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000442- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000443 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
444
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000445- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
446
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000447- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
448 to build.
449
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000450- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
451 symbolic links on Windows.
452
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000453- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000454 profile.py if available.
455
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000456- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
457
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000458- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
459 in LWPCookieJar.
460
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000461- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
462
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000463- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
464
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000465- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
466
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000467- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
468
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000469- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
470
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000471- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
472
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000473- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
474
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000475- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
476
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000477- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
478 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
479 be exploited in various ways.
480
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000481- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000482 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
483
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000484- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
485 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
486
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000487- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000488 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
489
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000490- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
491
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000492- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
493
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000494- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
495
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000496- Enhancements to the csv module:
497
498 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000499 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000500 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000501 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
502 reporting.
503 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
504 dictates.
505 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000506 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000507 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000508 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
509 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000510 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
511 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000512 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000513 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
514 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
515 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
516 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
517 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
518 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
519 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
520 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
521 without first creating a dialect class.
522 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
523 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
524 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000525 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000526 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
527 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000528 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
529 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
530 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
531 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000532 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
533 This has been fixed.
534
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000535- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
536 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
537 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
538 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
539
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000540- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
541
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000542- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
543 (Bug #951915).
544
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000545- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
546 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
547 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000548 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000549
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000550- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
551
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000552- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
553 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
554
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000555- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
556
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000557- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
558
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000559- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
560
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000561- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
562
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000563- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
564
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000565- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
566 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
567 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
568
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000569- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000570 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000571
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000572- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
573 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
574 tokenizer with very long source lines.
575
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000576- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
577 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
578
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000579- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
580 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000581
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000582- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
583 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
584
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000585- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
586 correctly.
587
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000588- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
589 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
590 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
591 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
592 between two lines.
593
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000594- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
595 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
596 handlers.
597
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000598- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000599 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
600 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000601
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000602- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
603 considering it exactly like a '*'.
604
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000605- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
606 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000607
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000608- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
609
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000610Build
611-----
612
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000613- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
614 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
615
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000616- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
617 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
618
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000619- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
620 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
621 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000622 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000623
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000624- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
625 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
626 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
627
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000628- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
629
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000630- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
631 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
632
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000633- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
634 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
635 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
636 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
637 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
638 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
639 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
640 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
641
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000642- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
643 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
644 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
645 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
646
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000647
648C API
649-----
650
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000651- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
652
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000653- Removed PyRange_New().
654
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000655- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
656 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
657 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
658 mappings.
659
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000660
661Tests
662-----
663
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000664- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000665
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000666- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
667 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
668
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000669
670Documentation
671-------------
672
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000673- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
674
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000675- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
676
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000677- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
678
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000679- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
680
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000681- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
682
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000683- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
684
685- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
686
687- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
688
689- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
690
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000691- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
692 Closes bug #1166582.
693
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000694- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
695 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
696 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
697
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000698Mac
699---
700
701
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000702New platforms
703-------------
704
705- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
706
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000707
708Tools/Demos
709-----------
710
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000711- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
712 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
713 source files that need an encoding declaration.
714 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
715
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000716- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
717
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000718- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000719
720
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000721What's New in Python 2.4 final?
722===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000723
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000724*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000725
726Core and builtins
727-----------------
728
729- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
730 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
731 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
732
733
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000734What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
735==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000736
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000737*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000738
739Core and builtins
740-----------------
741
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000742- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
743 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
744 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
745
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000746
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000747Library
748-------
749
750- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
751 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
752 raised is re-raised.
753
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000754- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
755 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
756
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000757- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
758 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
759 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
760 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
761 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
762 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
763 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
764 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
765 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
766 by the slice are recomputed now.
767
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000768- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000769
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000770Build
771-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000772
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000773- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
774 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
775 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000776
777C API
778-----
779
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000780- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
781
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000782
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000783What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
784================================
785
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000786*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000787
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000788License
789-------
790
791The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
792is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
793changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
794Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
795intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
796durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
797the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
798License::
799
800 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
801
802says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
803to Python 2.1.1.
804
805The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
806License Version 2.
807
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000808Core and builtins
809-----------------
810
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000811- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
812 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
813 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
814 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
815 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
816 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
817 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000818 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000819 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
820 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
821
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000822- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000823
824Extension Modules
825-----------------
826
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000827- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
828 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
829 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
830 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000831
832Library
833-------
834
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000835- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
836 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
837 returned.
838
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000839- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
840
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000841- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
842 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
843
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000844- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
845
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000846- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
847 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000848
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000849- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
850
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000851- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
852
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000853- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000854 the source code is updated and reloaded.
855
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000856Build
857-----
858
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000859- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000860
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000861What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
862================================
863
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000864*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000865
866Core and builtins
867-----------------
868
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000869- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000870 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
871
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000872- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
873 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
874 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
875 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
876
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000877- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
878 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
879
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000880- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
881 constant.
882
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000883- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
884 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
885 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
886 large), and to anomalies such as
887 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
888 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
889 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
890 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000891
892Extension modules
893-----------------
894
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000895- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
896 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000897 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
898 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
899 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000900
901Library
902-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000903
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000904- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000905 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000906 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
907 --swig-cpp.
908
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000909- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
910 it is set.
911
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000912- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000913
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000914- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
915 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
916 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
917 Closes bug #1039270.
918
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000919- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000920
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000921 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000922 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
923 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
924 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
925 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
926 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
927 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
928 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
929 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
930 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
931 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
932 + Updates to documentation.
933
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000934- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
935 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
936 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
937 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
938
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000939- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000940
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000941- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
942 applications should use the getmember function.
943
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000944- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
945
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000946- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
947 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
948 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
949 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
950 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
951 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
952 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
953 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
954 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
955
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000956- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
957 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000958 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000959
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000960- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
961 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
962 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
963 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
964 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
965 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
966 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
967 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000968
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000969- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
970 the new public features (of which there are many).
971
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000972- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000973 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
974 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
975 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
976 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000977 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000978
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000979- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
980
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000981- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
982 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
983 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
984 options.
985
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000986- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
987 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
988 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
989 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
990 conditions under which non-string values work.
991
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000992Build
993-----
994
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000995- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
996 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
997 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
998
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000999- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1000 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1001 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1002 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1003 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001004
1005C API
1006-----
1007
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001008- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1009 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1010
1011- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1012
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001013- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1014 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1015 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1016 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1017 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1018 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1019 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1020 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1021 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1022
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001023- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1024
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001025- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1026 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1027 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001028
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001029Tests
1030-----
1031
1032- test__locale ported to unittest
1033
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001034Mac
1035---
1036
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001037- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1038 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1039 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001040
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001041Tools/Demos
1042-----------
1043
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001044- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1045 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1046 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1047 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1048 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001049
1050
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001051What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1052=================================
1053
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001054*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001055
1056Core and builtins
1057-----------------
1058
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001059- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001060 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1061
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001062- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1063 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1064 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1065 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1066 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1067 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1068 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1069 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001070 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1071 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1072 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1073 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1074 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001075
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001076- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1077 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1078 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1079 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1080 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1081
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001082- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1083
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001084- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1085 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1086
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001087- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1088 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1089 modified the list.
1090
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001091- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1092 functions is now writable.
1093
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001094- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1095 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1096 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1097 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1098
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001099- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1100 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1101 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1102 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1103 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001104
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001105- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1106 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1107
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001108Extension modules
1109-----------------
1110
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001111- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1112
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001113- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1114 data.
1115
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001116- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1117 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1118 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1119 supposed to have been truncated away.
1120
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001121- Added socket.socketpair().
1122
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001123- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1124 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1125
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001126- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001127 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1128
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001129Library
1130-------
1131
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001132- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001133 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001134
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001135- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1136 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1137
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001138- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1139 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1140
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001141- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1142
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001143- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1144 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001145
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001146- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1147 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1148
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001149- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1150
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001151- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1152
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001153- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1154
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001155- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1156 Percivall.
1157
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001158- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1159 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1160
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001161- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1162 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1163 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001164 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001165
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001166- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1167 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1168 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1169 and exponent.
1170
1171- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1172
1173- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001174 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001175 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1176
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001177- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1178 to the readline module.
1179
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001180- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001181 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1182 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001183
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001184- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1185 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1186 contains symlinks.
1187
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001188- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1189 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1190
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001191- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1192 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1193 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1194
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001195- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1196 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1197 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1198 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1199 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1200 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1201 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1202 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1203 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1204 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1205 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1206 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1207 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1208
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001209- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1210
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001211Tools/Demos
1212-----------
1213
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001214- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1215 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1216
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001217- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1218
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001219Build
1220-----
1221
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001222- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1223 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1224 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1225 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1226 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1227 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1228 plans to do so.
1229
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001230- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1231 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1232
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001233- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1234 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1235
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001236- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1237 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1238
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001239- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1240 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1241
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001242- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1243 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1244
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001245C API
1246-----
1247
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001248..
1249
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001250Documentation
1251-------------
1252
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001253- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1254 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1255
1256- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1257 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1258 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001259
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001260New platforms
1261-------------
1262
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001263- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1264
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001265Tests
1266-----
1267
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001268..
1269
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001270Windows
1271-------
1272
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001273- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1274 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1275 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1276 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1277 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1278 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1279 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1280 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1281 the problem.
1282
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001283Mac
1284---
1285
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001286..
1287
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001288
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001289What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1290=================================
1291
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001292*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001293
1294Core and builtins
1295-----------------
1296
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001297- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1298 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1299 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1300 sensitive code.
1301
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001302- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001303 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001304
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001305 @staticmethod
1306 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001307
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001308 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001309
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001310- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1311 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1312 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1313 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1314 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1315 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1316 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1317 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1318 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1319 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1320 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1321
1322 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1323 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1324 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1325 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1326 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1327 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1328 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1329
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001330- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1331 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1332
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001333- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001334 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001335
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001336- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001337 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001338 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1339
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001340- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001341 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1342 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1343
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001344- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1345 types that support garbage collection.
1346
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001347- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1348
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001349- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1350 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1351 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1352 Jython.
1353
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001354- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1355
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001356- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1357 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1358
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001359- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1360 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1361 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001362
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001363- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1364 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1365 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1366
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001367Extension modules
1368-----------------
1369
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001370- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1371
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001372Library
1373-------
1374
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001375- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1376 TIS-620
1377
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001378- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1379 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1380 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1381 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1382 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1383 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1384 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1385 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1386 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1387 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1388
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001389- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1390
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001391- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1392 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1393 same as when the argument is omitted).
1394 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1395
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001396- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1397
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001398- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1399 schemes are offered.
1400
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001401- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1402
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001403- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1404 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1405 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1406
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001407- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1408
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001409- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1410 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1411
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001412- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1413 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1414 when dummy_threading is being used.
1415
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001416- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1417 from a tarfile.
1418
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001419- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001420 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001421
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001422- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1423 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1424 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1425 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1426
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001427- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1428 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1429
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001430- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1431 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1432 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1433 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1434 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1435 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1436 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1437 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1438 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1439 by some other method in progress).
1440
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001441- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1442 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1443 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001444
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001445- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1446
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001447- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1448 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1449 AM Kuchling.
1450
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001451- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1452 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1453 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1454
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001455- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1456 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1457 instead of unsigned.
1458
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001459- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001460 no longer part of the public API.
1461
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001462- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1463 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1464 string methods of the same name).
1465
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001466- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001467 SF patch 945642.
1468
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001469- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1470
1471 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1472
1473 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1474 DocTestSuites.
1475
1476- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1477 that provide thread-local data.
1478
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001479- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1480 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1481
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001482- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1483
1484- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1485 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1486 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1487
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001488- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1489
1490 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1491 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1492 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001493
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001494 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1495 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1496 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1497 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1498
1499 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1500 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1501
1502 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1503 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1504 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1505 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1506
1507 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1508 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1509 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1510 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1511 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1512
1513 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1514 wrapping help output.
1515
1516 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1517 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1518 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001519
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001520C API
1521-----
1522
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001523- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1524 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1525 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1526 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1527 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1528 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1529 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1530 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1531 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1532 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1533 its visible semantics have not changed.
1534
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001535- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1536 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1537
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001538Documentation
1539-------------
1540
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001541- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001542
1543 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001544 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001545
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001546 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001547
1548 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1549
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001550- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001551
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001552Tests
1553-----
1554
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001555- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001556 platforms that use the Makefile.
1557
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001558- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1559 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1560 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1561
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001562
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001563What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1564=================================
1565
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001566*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001567
1568Core and builtins
1569-----------------
1570
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001571- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1572 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1573 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1574 objects now (one object instead of three).
1575
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001576- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1577 Windows DLLs.
1578
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001579- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1580 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001581
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001582- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1583 a new .pyc magic.
1584
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001585- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1586 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1587 be there.
1588
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001589- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1590 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1591 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1592
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001593- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1594 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1595 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1596
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001597- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1598
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001599- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1600 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1601 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001602
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001603- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1604 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1605
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001606- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1607
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001608- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001609 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001610
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001611- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1612
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001613- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1614
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001615- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1616 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1617
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001618- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1619 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1620 Fixes bug #858016 .
1621
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001622- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1623 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1624 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1625
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001626- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1627 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1628 improves their performance (about 35%).
1629
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001630- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1631 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1632 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1633
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001634- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1635 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1636 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1637 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1638
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001639- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1640 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001641 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001642 length is not known).
1643
1644- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1645 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001646 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1647 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001648 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1649
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001650- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1651 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1652
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001653- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1654 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1655 keyword arguments.
1656
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001657- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1658 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1659 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1660
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001661- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1662 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1663 cases.
1664
1665- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1666 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1667 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1668 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1669 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1670 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1671 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1672 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1673 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1674 a release build.
1675
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001676- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1677 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1678
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001679- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001680 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001681
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001682- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1683 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1684 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1685 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1686 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1687 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1688 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1689 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1690 destroyed.
1691
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001692- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1693 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1694 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1695 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1696 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1697 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1698 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1699 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1700
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001701- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1702 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1703 character other than a space.
1704
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001705- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1706 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1707 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1708 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1709 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1710 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1711 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1712 attributes with the same name.
1713
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001714- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1715 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1716 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1717 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1718 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1719 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1720 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1721 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1722 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1723 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1724 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1725 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1726 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1727 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001728
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001729- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1730 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1731 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1732 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1733 This has been repaired.
1734
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001735- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1736
1737- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1738
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001739- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1740 over a sequence.
1741
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001742- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001743 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001744
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001745- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1746
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001747- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1748 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1749 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1750 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1751 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1752 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1753 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1754 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1755
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001756- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1757 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1758 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1759
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001760- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1761 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1762 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1763 freelist.
1764
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001765- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1766 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1767
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001768- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1769 number.
1770
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001771- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1772 a TypeError exception.
1773
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001774- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1775 820195.
1776
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001777- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1778 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1779 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1780
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001781- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001782 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1783 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001784
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001785- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1786 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1787 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1788
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001789- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1790 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001791 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001792
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001793- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001794 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1795 the first call.
1796
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001797
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001798Extension modules
1799-----------------
1800
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001801- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1802 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1803
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001804- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1805 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1806 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1807 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1808 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1809 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1810 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001811
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001812- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1813
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001814- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1815
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001816- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1817 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1818
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001819- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1820 fewer false positives.
1821
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001822- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1823 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1824
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001825- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001826 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1827
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001828- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001829 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001830 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001831 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1832 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001833
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001834- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1835 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1836 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1837 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1838
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001839- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1840 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1841 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1842 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1843 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1844 #897625.
1845
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001846- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1847 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1848
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001849- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1850 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1851 and pops on either side of the deque.
1852
1853- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1854 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1855
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001856- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1857 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1858 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1859 other functions that expect a function argument.
1860
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001861- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1862
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001863- os.getsid was added.
1864
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001865- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1866 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1867 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1868
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001869- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1870
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001871- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1872
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001873- readline.clear_history was added.
1874
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001875- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1876
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001877- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1878
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001879- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1880
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001881- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1882
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001883- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1884
1885- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1886
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001887- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1888
1889- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1890
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001891- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1892 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1893 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1894
1895- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1896 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1897 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1898 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1899 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1900 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1901 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1902
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001903- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1904 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1905 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1906 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001907
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001908- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001909 iterators from a single iterable.
1910
1911- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1912 of raising a TypeError exception.
1913
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001914- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1915 as parameter.
1916
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001917Library
1918-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001919
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001920- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1921
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001922- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1923 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1924 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001925
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001926- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1927 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1928 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001929
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001930- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001931
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001932- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1933 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001934
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001935- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1936 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1937
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001938- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1939
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001940- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001941 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001942
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001943- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001944 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001945
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001946- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1947
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001948- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1949 on cygwin and mingw32.
1950
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001951- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1952
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001953- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1954 module.
1955
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001956- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1957 installation scheme for all platforms.
1958
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001959- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001960 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001961
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001962- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1963 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1964 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1965
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001966- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1967 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1968 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1969
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001970- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1971
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001972- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1973
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001974- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1975 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1976
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001977- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1978 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1979 type pattern with the same value exists.
1980
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001981- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1982 when run from the command prompt).
1983
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001984- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1985 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1986
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001987- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1988 default sort).
1989
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001990- Added global runctx function to profile module
1991
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001992- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1993
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001994- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1995
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001996- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1997
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001998- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001999 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2000 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2001 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2002 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2003 accordingly.
2004
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002005- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2006 decoding standards.
2007
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002008- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2009 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2010 called for all requests.
2011
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002012- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2013 they are passed to the compiler.
2014
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002015- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2016 indent, width and depth.
2017
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002018- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2019 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2020
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002021- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2022 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2023
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002024- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2025
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002026- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2027
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002028- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2029
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002030- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2031 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2032
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002033- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002034 for better performance.
2035
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002036- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002037
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002038- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2039 a string).
2040
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002041- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2042
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002043- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2044
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002045- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2046
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002047- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2048
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002049- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2050 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2051 list of fieldnames.
2052
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002053- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2054 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2055
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002056- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2057
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002058- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2059 empty lists.
2060
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002061- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2062 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2063 and shelves.
2064
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002065- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2066 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2067
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002068- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002069 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2070 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002071
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002072- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2073 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002074 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002075
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002076- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002077 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2078 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2079
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002080- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2081 and removed in Py2.4.
2082
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002083- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2084
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002085- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2086
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002087Tools/Demos
2088-----------
2089
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002090- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2091 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2092
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002093- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2094
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002095- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2096 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2097 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2098 destination in situations where both files are given.
2099
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002100- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2101 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2102 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2103 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2104
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002105- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2106
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002107- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2108 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2109 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2110 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2111 now.
2112
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002113- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2114 in effect
2115
2116- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2117 C-c C-h
2118
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002119- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2120 -d option was given.
2121
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002122Build
2123-----
2124
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002125- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2126 build under OS X.
2127
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002128- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2129 --enable-profiling.
2130
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002131- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2132 is configured --with-tsc.
2133
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002134- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2135 on AMD64.
2136
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002137- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2138 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2139
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002140- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2141 removed.
2142
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002143- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2144 supported (see PEP 11).
2145
2146- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2147
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002148- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2149
2150- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2151 (see PEP 11).
2152
2153- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2154 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2155
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002156C API
2157-----
2158
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002159- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2160 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2161 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2162
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002163- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2164 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2165 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2166 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2167
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002168- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2169 generator objects.
2170
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002171- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2172 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002173 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2174 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002175
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002176- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2177 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2178
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002179- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2180 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2181 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2182 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2183 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2184
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002185- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2186 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2187 about 10% faster.
2188
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002189- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2190 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2191
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002192- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2193 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2194 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2195 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2196
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002197Windows
2198-------
2199
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002200- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2201 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2202 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2203 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2204
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002205- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2206 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2207 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2208
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002209
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002210What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2211===============================
2212
2213*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2214
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002215IDLE
2216----
2217
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002218- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2219 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2220 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2221 context-menu actions.
2222
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002223- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2224 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2225 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2226 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2227 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2228 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2229 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2230 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2231 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2232
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002233
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002234What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2235=============================================
2236
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002237*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002238
2239Core and builtins
2240-----------------
2241
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002242- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002243 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002244 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2245
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002246Extension modules
2247-----------------
2248
2249- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2250 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2251 than once. This has been fixed.
2252
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002253- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2254 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2255 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2256 call.
2257
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002258- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2259
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002260Library
2261-------
2262
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002263- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2264 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2265
2266- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2267 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2268 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2269 restored.
2270
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002271IDLE
2272----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002273
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002274- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002275
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002276Build
2277-----
2278
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002279- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2280 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2281
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002282C API
2283-----
2284
2285Windows
2286-------
2287
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002288- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2289 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2290
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002291- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2292
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002293Mac
2294---
2295
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002296- Various fixes to pimp.
2297
2298- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2299
2300- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2301 more problems than it solves.
2302
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002303
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002304What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2305=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002306
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002307*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2308
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002309Core and builtins
2310-----------------
2311
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002312- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2313 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2314
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002315- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2316 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002317 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002318
2319- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2320 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2321 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002322 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002323
2324- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2325 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002326
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002327- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2328 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2329 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2330
2331- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002332 770247.
2333
2334- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002335
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002336Extension modules
2337-----------------
2338
2339- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2340 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2341
2342- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2343
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002344- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2345
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002346- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2347 contained within the _strptime module.
2348
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002349- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2350 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2351
2352- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002353 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2354
2355- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2356 the find_class attribute, if present.
2357
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002358- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002359
2360 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2361 (SF bug 763298).
2362
2363 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002364 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2365 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2366 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002367
2368 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2369
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002370Library
2371-------
2372
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002373- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2374
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002375- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2376 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2377 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2378 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2379 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2380 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2381 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2382 or Tester().
2383
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002384- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2385 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2386 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2387 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2388 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2389 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2390 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2391 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2392 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002393
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002394 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002395
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002396- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2397 weren't before was an oversight.
2398
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002399- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2400 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2401
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002402- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2403 when there are no lines.
2404
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002405- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2406 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2407
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002408- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2409 to child processes.
2410
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002411- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2412
2413- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2414
2415- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2416 xmlrpclib.
2417
2418- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2419 responses.
2420
2421- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2422 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2423
2424- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2425 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2426 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2427
2428- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2429 used as patterns.
2430
2431- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2432 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2433 than Tk 8.3.
2434
2435- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2436
2437- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002438
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002439Tools/Demos
2440-----------
2441
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002442- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2443
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002444- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2445
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002446- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002447
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002448Build
2449-----
2450
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002451- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2452
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002453- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2454
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002455- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2456 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002457
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002458- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2459 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2460 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002461
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002462C API
2463-----
2464
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002465- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2466 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2467
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002468Windows
2469-------
2470
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002471- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2472 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2473 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2474 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2475 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2476 Python exception ::
2477
2478 thread.error: can't start new thread
2479
2480 is raised now.
2481
2482- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2483 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2484 instead of from DLL teardown.
2485
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002486Mac
2487---
2488
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002489- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002490 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002491 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2492 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2493 the executable in the bundle.
2494
2495- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002496
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002497- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2498
2499- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2500 on Panther.
2501
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002502What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2503================================
2504
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002505*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002506
2507Core and builtins
2508-----------------
2509
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002510- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2511 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2512 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2513 with the -i option.
2514
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002515- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2516 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2517
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002518- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2519 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2520
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002521- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2522 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2523 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2524 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2525 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2526 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2527 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2528 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2529 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2530 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2531 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2532 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2533 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002534
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002535- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2536 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2537 embedded in a lambda expression.
2538
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002539- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2540 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2541 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2542 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2543 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2544
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002545- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2546 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2547 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2548
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002549- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2550 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2551
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002552- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2553 It's writable again.
2554
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002555- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2556 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2557 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002558 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002559
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002560- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2561 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2562 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2563
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002564Extension modules
2565-----------------
2566
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002567- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2568 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2569
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002570- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2571 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2572 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2573 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2574
2575- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2576 collection.
2577
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002578- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2579 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2580 unique within a single program run.
2581
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002582- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2583 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2584
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002585- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2586 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2587
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002588- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2589 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002590
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002591- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2592
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002593- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2594 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2595
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002596- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2597 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2598 for many BSD-derived systems.
2599
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002600
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002601Library
2602-------
2603
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002604- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2605 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2606 primary ones:
2607
2608 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2609 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2610 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2611
2612 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2613 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2614 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2615 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2616 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2617 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2618
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002619- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2620 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2621 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2622 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2623 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2624 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2625 argument.
2626
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002627- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2628 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2629 in the archive.
2630
2631- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2632 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2633
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002634- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2635 569574).
2636
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002637- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2638 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2639 no more.
2640
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002641- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2642 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2643 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2644 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2645 code coverage.
2646
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002647- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2648 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2649 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002650 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2651 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002652
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002653- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2654 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2655 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002656 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002657
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002658- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2659
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002660- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2661 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2662 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2663 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2664
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002665- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2666 handling.
2667
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002668- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2669 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2670
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002671- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2672 in socket.py.
2673
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002674- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2675
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002676- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2677 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2678 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2679 opener with proxy support.
2680
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002681- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2682
2683- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2684
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002685Tools/Demos
2686-----------
2687
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002688- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2689
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002690- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2691
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002692- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2693 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002694
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002695- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2696 files.
2697
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002698Build
2699-----
2700
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002701- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002702 different root directory.
2703
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002704C API
2705-----
2706
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002707- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2708 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2709 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2710 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2711 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2712 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2713 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2714 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2715 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2716 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2717
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002718- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2719 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2720 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2721 from Python.
2722
2723
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002724New platforms
2725-------------
2726
2727None this time.
2728
2729Tests
2730-----
2731
2732- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2733 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2734
2735Windows
2736-------
2737
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002738- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2739
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002740- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2741 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2742 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2743 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2744 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2745 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2746 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2747 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2748 that's what it's for.
2749
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002750Mac
2751---
2752
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002753- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2754 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2755 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2756 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002757- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2758 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2759- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002760
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002761SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2762------------------------------------
2763
2764430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2765598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2766622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2767661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2768683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2769697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2770713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2771724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2772727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2773729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2774730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2775731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2776732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2777733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2778735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2779740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2780744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2781745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2782747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2783749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2784751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2785753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2786755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2787757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2788760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2789
2790
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002791What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2792================================
2793
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002794*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002795
2796Core and builtins
2797-----------------
2798
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002799- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2800 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2801
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002802- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2803 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2804 and cannot be strings).
2805
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002806- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2807 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2808 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2809 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2810
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002811- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2812 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2813 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2814 Python itself.
2815
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002816- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2817 the referenced object, if it has one.
2818
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002819- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2820 the thread started at
2821 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2822
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002823- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2824 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2825 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2826 placed on a list index.
2827
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002828- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2829 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2830 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2831 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2832
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002833- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2834 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2835 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2836 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2837 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2838 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2839 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2840
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002841- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2842 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2843 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2844 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2845 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2846
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002847- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2848 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002849
2850- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2851 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2852 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2853 #693195.)
2854
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002855- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2856 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002857
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002858- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002859 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002860 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2861 interpreter executions, would fail.
2862
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002863- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002864 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002865 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002866
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002867Extension modules
2868-----------------
2869
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002870- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2871 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2872 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2873 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2874
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002875- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2876 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2877
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002878- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2879 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2880 and Greg Chapman.)
2881
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002882- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2883 recursively.
2884
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002885- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002886 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2887 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2888 leaks.
2889
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002890- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2891
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002892- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2893 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2894 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2895 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2896 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2897 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2898 #705836.
2899
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002900- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002901 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2902
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002903- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2904 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2905 See SF bug #692416.
2906
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002907- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2908 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2909
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002910- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2911 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2912 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002913
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002914- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002915 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2916 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2917
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002918- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2919 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2920 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2921 timeouts to work properly.
2922
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002923Library
2924-------
2925
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002926- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2927 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2928 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2929 future release.
2930
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002931- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2932 for querying platform dependent features.
2933
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002934- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002935
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002936- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2937 pickle protocol versions.
2938
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002939- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2940 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2941 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2942
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002943- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2944
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002945- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2946 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2947 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2948 modules.
2949
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002950- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2951 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2952 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2953
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002954- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2955 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2956
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002957- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2958 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2959 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2960
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002961- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002962 MS Office extensions.
2963
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002964- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2965 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2966
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002967- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2968 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2969
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002970- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2971 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2972 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2973 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2974 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2975 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2976
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002977- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2978 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2979 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002980
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002981- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2982 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2983 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2984
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002985- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2986
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002987- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2988 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2989 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2990
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002991Tools/Demos
2992-----------
2993
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002994- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2995 See the module docstring for details.
2996
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002997Build
2998-----
2999
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003000- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3001 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003002
3003C API
3004-----
3005
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003006- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3007
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003008- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3009 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3010 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3011
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003012- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3013 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003014
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003015 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3016 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3017 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003018
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003019- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003020 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3021
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003022- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3023 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3024 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003025
3026New platforms
3027-------------
3028
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003029None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003030
3031Tests
3032-----
3033
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003034- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3035 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003036
3037Windows
3038-------
3039
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003040- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3041 function.
3042
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003043- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3044 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003045
3046Mac
3047---
3048
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003049- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3050 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003051
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003052- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3053 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003054
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003055- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3056 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3057 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003058
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003059- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003060 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3061 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003062
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003063- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3064 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003065
3066
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003067What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3068=================================
3069
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003070*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003071
3072Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003073-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003074
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003075- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3076 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3077 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3078
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003079- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3080 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3081 (SF patch #664376.)
3082
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003083- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3084 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3085 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3086 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3087 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3088 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003089 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003090
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003091- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3092 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3093 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3094 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003095 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003096
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003097- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3098 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3099 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3100 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3101 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3102 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3103 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3104 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3105 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3106 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3107 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3108
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003109- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3110 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3111 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3112 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3113 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3114 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3115
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003116- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3117 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3118
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003119- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3120 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3121 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3122 case.)
3123
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003124- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3125 passed as unicode strings.
3126
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003127- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3128 See SF bug #683467.
3129
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003130- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3131 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3132
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003133- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3134
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003135- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3136
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003137- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3138 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3139 arguments.
3140
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003141- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3142 See SF bug #667147.
3143
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003144- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003145 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003146 See SF bug #676155.
3147
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003148- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003149 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003150 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3151 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3152 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3153 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3154 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3155 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003156
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003157Extension modules
3158-----------------
3159
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003160- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3161 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3162 tp_as_number pointer.
3163
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003164- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3165 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3166 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3167 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3168 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3169
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003170- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3171
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003172- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3173
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003174- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003175 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003176 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3177 patch #678531.)
3178
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003179- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3180 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3181
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003182- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3183 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3184
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003185- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3186
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003187- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3188 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3189 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3190
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003191- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3192
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003193- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3194 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3195
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003196- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003197
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003198- datetime changes:
3199
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003200 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3201
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003202 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3203 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3204 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3205 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3206 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3207 now.
3208
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003209 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003210 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3211 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003212
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003213 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003214 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003215 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3216 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3217 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3218 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003219
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003220 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3221 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3222 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003223 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3224
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003225 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3226 by a later example coded by Guido.
3227
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003228 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003229 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3230 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3231 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003232 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3233 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3234
3235 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3236 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3237 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3238 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3239 tzinfo subclass instance.
3240
3241 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3242 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3243 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3244 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3245 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3246 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3247 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3248 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003249
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003250 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3251 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3252 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3253 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3254 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003255 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3256
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003257 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003258
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003259 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3260 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3261 as a naive datetime object.
3262
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003263 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3264 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3265 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3266
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003267 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3268 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3269 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3270 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3271 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3272 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3273 comparison.
3274
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003275 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3276 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3277 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3278 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003279 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003280
3281 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003282
3283 and ::
3284
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003285 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3286
3287 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3288 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3289 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3290 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3291
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003292 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3293 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3294 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3295 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3296 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3297
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003298 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3299 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003300 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3301 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003302
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003303Library
3304-------
3305
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003306- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3307 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3308
3309- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3310 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3311 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3312 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3313 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3314 See PEP 307 for details.
3315
3316- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3317 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3318
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003319- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3320 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003321 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003322 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3323 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003324 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003325
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003326- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3327 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3328
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003329- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3330 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3331 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3332
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003333- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3334
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003335- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3336 exception.
3337
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003338- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3339 class.
3340
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003341- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3342 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3343 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3344
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003345- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3346 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3347
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003348- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003349 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3350 See SF bug #659228.
3351
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003352- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3353 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3354 See SF patch #651082.
3355
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003356- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003357
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003358- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3359 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3360
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003361- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003362 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003363
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003364- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3365 DOS paths from other platforms.
3366
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003367Tools/Demos
3368-----------
3369
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003370- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3371 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3372 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3373 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3374 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3375 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3376 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3377 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3378 example:
3379
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003380 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3381 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003382
3383 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3384
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003385
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003386Build
3387-----
3388
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003389- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3390 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3391 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003392 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3393
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003394 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3395
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003396- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3397 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3398 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3399 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3400 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3401 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3402 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3403 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3404 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3405
3406- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3407 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3408 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3409 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3410
3411- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3412 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3413
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003414C API
3415-----
3416
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003417- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3418 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003419
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003420- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3421 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3422 tp_as_number pointer.
3423
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003424- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3425 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3426 (SF #681367)
3427
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003428- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3429 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3430 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3431 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003432
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003433Tests
3434-----
3435
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003436- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003437 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3438 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3439 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3440 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3441 pydoc.)
3442
3443- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3444
3445- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003446
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003447Windows
3448-------
3449
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003450- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3451 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3452 time).
3453
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003454- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3455 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3456
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003457- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3458 release without strong cryptography.
3459
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003460- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003461 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003462
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003463- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3464 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3465
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003466Mac
3467---
3468
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003469- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3470 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003471
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003472- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3473 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3474 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003475
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003476- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3477 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003478
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003479- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3480 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3481 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3482 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003483
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003484- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003485 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3486 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3487 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003488
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003489
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003490What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003491=================================
3492
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003493*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003494
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003495Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003496--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003497
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003498- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3499
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003500- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3501 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003502 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003503 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003504 a different meaning than before.
3505
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003506- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003507 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003508 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003509
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003510- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003511 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003512 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003513
3514- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3515 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3516 and deallocation.
3517
3518- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3519 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3520
3521- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3522 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3523 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3524 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3525 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3526
3527- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3528 now detected by the garbage collector.
3529
3530- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3531 [SF bug 519621]
3532
3533- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3534 identifier.
3535
3536- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3537 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3538 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3539 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3540 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3541 [SF bug 563060]
3542
3543- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3544 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3545 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3546 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3547 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3548
3549- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3550 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3551 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3552
3553- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3554
3555- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3556 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3557 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3558 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3559 state of the slots would be lost.)
3560
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003561Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003562-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003563
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003564- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003565 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3566 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3567 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3568 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003569 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3570 Jython 2.1.
3571
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003572- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003573 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003574 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3575 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3576 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3577 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3578 these, see PEP 302.
3579
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003580- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3581 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3582 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3583
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003584- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3585 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3586 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3587
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003588- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3589 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3590 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3591
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003592- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3593 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3594 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3595 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3596 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3597 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3598 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3599 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3600 releases or implementations.
3601
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003602- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003603 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3604 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003605
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003606- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3607 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3608
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003609- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3610 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3611 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3612
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003613- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3614 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3615
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003616- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3617 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003618 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3619 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003620
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003621- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3622 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3623 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3624 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3625 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3626
3627 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3628 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3629 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3630 pattern.
3631
3632 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3633 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3634 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3635 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3636
3637 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3638 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3639 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3640 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3641 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3642 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3643
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003644- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3645 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3646 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3647 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3648 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3649 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3650 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3651 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003652
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003653- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3654 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3655 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3656 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3657 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003658 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3659 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3660 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3661 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3662 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3663 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3664 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003665
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003666- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3667 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3668
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003669- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3670 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3671 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3672 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3673 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3674 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3675 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3676 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3677 to Zack Weinberg!
3678
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003679- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3680 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3681 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3682 type. This has been fixed now.
3683
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003684- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3685 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3686 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3687
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003688- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3689 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3690 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3691 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3692 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3693 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3694 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3695 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003696 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003697
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003698- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3699 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3700 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003701
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003702- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3703 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3704 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3705 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3706 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3707 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3708 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3709 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003710 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003711 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3712 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3713
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003714- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3715 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3716 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3717 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3718 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3719 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3720 this.)
3721
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003722- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3723 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003724 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003725 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003726 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3727 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003728 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3729 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003730
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003731- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3732 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3733 currently running.
3734
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003735- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3736 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3737 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3738 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3739
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003740- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3741 as directory names.
3742
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003743- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3744 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3745
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003746- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3747 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3748
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003749- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003750 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3751 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003752
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003753- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3754 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3755 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3756 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3757 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3758
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003759- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3760 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3761 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3762 removed.
3763
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003764- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3765 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3766 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3767
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003768- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3769 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3770 to __debug__.
3771
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003772- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3773 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3774 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3775
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003776- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3777 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3778 deprecated now.
3779
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003780- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3781 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3782 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003783
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003784- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3785 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3786 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3787 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3788 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003789
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003790- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3791 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3792
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003793- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3794 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3795 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003796 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003797 is backward compatible.
3798
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003799- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3800 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3801 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3802 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3803 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3804
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003805- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3806 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3807 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3808 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3809 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3810 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003811
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003812- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3813 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3814
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003815- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3816 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3817
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003818- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3819 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3820 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3821 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3822 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3823
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003824- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3825 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3826 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3827
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003828- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003829 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3830
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003831- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3832 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3833 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003834
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003835- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3836 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3837
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003838- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3839 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3840 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3841
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003842- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3843
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003844Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003845-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003846
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003847- Added three operators to the operator module:
3848 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3849 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3850 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3851
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003852- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3853
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003854- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3855 archives.
3856
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003857- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3858 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3859 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3860
3861 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3862
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003863- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3864 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3865 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003866 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003867
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003868- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3869 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3870 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3871 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003872 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3873 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3874 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3875 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003876
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003877- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3878 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003879
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003880- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3881
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003882- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3883 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3884
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003885- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3886 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3887 supported.
3888
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003889- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3890
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003891- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3892 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003893
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003894- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3895 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3896
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003897- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3898
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003899- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3900 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3901
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003902- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3903 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3904 functions but callable type objects.
3905
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003906- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003907 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003908 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003909
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003910- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3911 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003912
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003913- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3914 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003915
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003916- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3917 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3918 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3919 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3920
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003921- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3922 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003923
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003924- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3925 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3926 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3927 and __imul__.
3928
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003929- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003930 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3931 is called.
3932
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003933- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3934 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3935 interpreter was compiled.
3936
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003937- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3938 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3939 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003940 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003941 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3942 1, not 2.
3943
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003944- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3945 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3946 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3947 limit.
3948
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003949- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3950 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3951 bug #623464.
3952
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003953- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3954 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3955 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3956 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3957
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003958Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003959-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003960
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003961- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3962
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003963- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3964 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3965 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3966 with Python 2.3a2.
3967
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003968- os.path exposes getctime.
3969
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003970- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003971 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003972 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003973 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003974 unit tests of floating point results.
3975
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003976- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3977 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3978 has been increased.
3979
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003980- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3981 executed.
3982
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003983- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3984 postinstallation script.
3985
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003986- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3987 test the current module.
3988
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003989- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003990 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3991 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3992 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3993 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3994
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003995- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003996 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003997 Ward's Optik package.
3998
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003999- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4000 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4001 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4002 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4003
4004- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4005 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004006 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004007
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004008- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4009 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4010 shelf are binary pickles.
4011
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004012- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4013 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4014
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004015- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4016 modules are iterators now.
4017
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004018- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4019 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4020 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4021 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4022 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4023 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004024
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004025- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4026 with their entity value.
4027
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004028- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4029
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004030- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4031 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004032
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004033- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4034 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004035 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004036
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004037- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4038 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4039 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4040 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4041 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4042 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4043 main():
4044
4045 import locale
4046 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4047
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004048- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4049 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4050
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004051- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4052 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4053 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4054 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4055 to the new standard.
4056
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004057- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4058 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4059 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4060 an extension to the database.
4061
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004062- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4063 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4064 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4065 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004066 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004067
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004068- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004069 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004070
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004071- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4072 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4073 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4074 bounded integers.
4075
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004076- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4077 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4078 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4079 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4080 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4081 in existence.
4082
4083 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4084 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4085 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4086 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4087 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4088 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4089
4090 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4091 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4092 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4093 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4094
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004095- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4096 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4097 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4098
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004099- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4100
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004101- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4102 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4103 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4104 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4105
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004106- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4107 argument.
4108
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004109- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4110 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4111 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4112 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4113 [SF patch 560794].
4114
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004115- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4116 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4117 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004118 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4119 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4120 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004121
4122- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4123 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004124
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004125- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4126 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4127 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4128 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004129
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004130- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4131 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4132 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4133 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4134 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4135
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004136- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004137
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004138- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4139
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004140- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4141 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4142 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4143 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4144 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4145 identical to None.
4146
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004147- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4148 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4149 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4150 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4151 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4152 results now.
4153
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004154- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4155 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4156
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004157- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4158 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4159 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4160 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4161 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4162 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4163 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4164 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4165
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004166- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4167
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004168- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4169 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4170
4171- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4172 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4173 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4174 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4175 and other systems.
4176
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004177- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4178 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4179 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4180 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 +00004181 work well with these.
4182
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004183- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4184
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004185- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004186 connections.
4187
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004188- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4189 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4190 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4191
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004192- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4193 sets
4194
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004195- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4196 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4197 name.
4198
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004199- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4200 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4201 passed in.
4202
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004203- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004204 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004205 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4206 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004207
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004208- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4209
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004210- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4211
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004212- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4213 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4214 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4215
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004216- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4217 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4218 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4219 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004220 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004221
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004222- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004223 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004224 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004225
4226- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4227 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4228 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4229
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004230- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004231 the value of its expression argument.
4232
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004233- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4234 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4235 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4236
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004237- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4238 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4239 skipstone browser was included.
4240
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004241- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4242 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4243
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004244Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004245-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004246
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004247- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4248 names in addition to accepting file names.
4249
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004250- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4251 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4252 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4253 still used and useful.)
4254
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004255- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4256 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4257 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4258 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004259
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004260- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4261 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4262 the generated binary.
4263
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004264Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004265-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004266
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004267- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4268
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004269- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4270 except in the hands of experts.
4271
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004272- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004273 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4274 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4275 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004276
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004277- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4278 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4279 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4280 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4281 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4282 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4283 builds.
4284
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004285- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4286 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4287 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4288 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4289 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4290 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4291 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4292 new type.
4293
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004294- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004295
4296 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4297 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4298 positive infinities.
4299
4300 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4301 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4302 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4303 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4304 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4305 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4306 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4307
4308 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4309
4310 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4311
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004312- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4313 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4314 size of the executable.
4315
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004316- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4317 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4318 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4319 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004320
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004321- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4322
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004323- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4324 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4325 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004326
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004327- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4328 well as Unix.
4329
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004330- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4331 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4332 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4333 modules in the README file for details.
4334
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004335C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004336-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004337
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004338- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4339 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004340 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004341 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004342 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004343
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004344- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4345 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4346 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4347 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4348 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4349 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004350 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004351 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4352 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4353 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4354 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4355 aligned.)
4356
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004357- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4358 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4359 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4360
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004361- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4362 level.
4363
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004364- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4365 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4366 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4367 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4368 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4369
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004370- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4371 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4372 code.
4373
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004374- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4375 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4376 adjusting for negative indices.
4377
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004378- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4379 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4380 object.
4381
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004382- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4383 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4384 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4385
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004386- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4387 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004388
4389- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4390
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004391- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4392 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4393 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4394 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4395
4396- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4397
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004398- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004399
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004400- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004401 without going through the buffer API.
4402
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004403- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004404
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004405- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4406 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4407 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4408 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4409
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004410- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4411 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4412
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004413- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004414 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4415
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004416New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004417-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004418
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004419- OpenVMS is now supported.
4420
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004421- AtheOS is now supported.
4422
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004423- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4424
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004425- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4426
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004427Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004428-----
4429
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004430- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4431 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4432 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004433
4434Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004435-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004436
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004437- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4438 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4439 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4440 bugs.
4441 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004442 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004443 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4444 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004445 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004446
4447- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004448 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004449
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004450- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4451 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4452
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004453- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4454 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004455 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004456 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4457
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004458- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4459 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4460 use files" uninstall option).
4461
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004462- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4463
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004464- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4465 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4466
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004467- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4468 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4469 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4470
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004471- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4472 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4473 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4474 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4475 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004476 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4477 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4478 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004479
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004480- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004481 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004482 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4483 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4484 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4485 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4486 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4487 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4488 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4489 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4490 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4491 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4492 work around.
4493
4494- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4495 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4496 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4497 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4498 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4499 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4500 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4501 specified with O_CREAT too).
4502
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004503Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004504----
4505
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004506- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004507
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004508- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4509 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4510 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4511
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004512- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4513 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4514 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4515
4516- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4517 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4518 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4519 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4520 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4521 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4522 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4523 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004524
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004525- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4526 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4527 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004528
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004529- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4530 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4531 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4532 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4533 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004534
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004535- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4536 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4537 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004538
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004539- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4540 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004541
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004542- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4543 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4544 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4545 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4546 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004547
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004548- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4549 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4550 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4551
4552- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4553 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4554 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004555
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004556- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4557 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4558 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4559 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004560 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004561
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004562- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4563 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004564
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004565- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4566 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004567
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004568- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004569 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004570 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4571 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004572
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004573
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004574What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004575===============================
4576
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004577*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4578
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004579Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004580--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004581
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004582- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4583 with a custom metaclass.
4584
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004585Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004586-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004587
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004588- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4589 are proxies.
4590
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004591Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004592-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004593
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004594- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4595 very short strings.
4596
4597- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4598 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4599 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4600 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4601 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4602
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004603Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004604-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004605
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004606- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4607 close or delete time).
4608
4609- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4610 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4611
4612- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4613
4614- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004615 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004616
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004617Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004618-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004619
4620Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004621-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004622
4623C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004624-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004625
4626New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004627-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004628
4629Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004630-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004631
4632Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004633-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004634
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004635- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4636
4637- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4638 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4639
4640- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4641 deleted at process exit time.
4642
4643- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4644 in backslash.
4645
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004646Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004647----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004648
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004649- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4650 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4651 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4652
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004653
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004654What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004655===========================
4656
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004657*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4658
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004659Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004660--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004661
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004662- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4663 been extensively updated. See
4664
4665 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4666
4667 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4668
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004669- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4670 deleted!
4671
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004672- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4673 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4674 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4675 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4676 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4677
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004678- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4679
4680 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4681 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4682
4683 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4684 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4685 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4686 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4687 supported anyway.
4688
4689 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4690 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4691
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004692- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4693 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4694 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4695 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4696 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004697
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004698- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4699 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4700 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4701
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004702Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004703-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004704
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004705- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4706 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4707 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4708 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4709 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4710 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004711 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4712 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4713 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4714 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004715
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004716- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4717 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4718 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4719
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004720Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004721-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004722
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004723- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4724
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004725Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004726-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004727
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004728- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4729 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4730 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4731 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4732 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4733 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4734
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004735- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4736
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004737- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4738
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004739- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4740
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004741- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4742 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4743 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4744
4745- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4746
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004747Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004748-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004749
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004750- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4751 off a search on Google.
4752
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004753Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004754-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004755
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004756- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4757 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4758 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4759 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4760 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4761 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4762 other platforms should do likewise.
4763
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004764- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4765 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4766 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4767
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004768C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004769-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004770
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004771- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4772 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4773 producing key-value pairs.
4774
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004775- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004776 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004777 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4778 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4779 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4780 previously went unchallenged.
4781
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004782New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004783-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004784
4785Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004786-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004787
4788Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004789-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004790
4791Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004792----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004793
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004794- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4795 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004796
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004797- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4798 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4799 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4800 home.
4801
4802
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004803What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004804===========================
4805
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004806*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4807
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004808Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004809--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004810
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004811- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4812 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004813
4814 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004815 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004816
4817 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4818 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004819 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004820 This needs to be documented.
4821
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004822- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4823 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4824
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004825- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4826 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4827 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4828
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004829- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4830 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4831
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004832- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4833 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4834 class forbids it).
4835
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004836- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4837 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4838 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4839
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004840- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4841
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004842Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004843-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004844
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004845- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4846 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004847 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004848
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004849- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4850 (like 1 + '').
4851
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004852Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004853-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004854
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004855- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4856 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4857 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4858 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004859 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004860 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4861
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004862- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4863 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4864 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4865 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4866
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004867- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4868 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004869 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4870 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4871 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004872
4873- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4874 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004875
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004876- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4877 bytes on its input.
4878
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004879Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004880-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004881
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004882- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004883 convenience function.
4884
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004885- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4886 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4887 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004888 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4889 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4890 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4891 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4892 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4893 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004894
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004895- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4896 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4897 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4898 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4899
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004900- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4901 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4902 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4903
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004904- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4905 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4906 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4907 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4908
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004909- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4910 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004911 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004912 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4913 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4914 new -l and -e options.
4915
4916- statcache is now deprecated.
4917
4918- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4919 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004920 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004921 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4922 time properly taken into account.
4923
4924- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4925 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4926 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4927 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4928
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004929Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004930-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004931
4932Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004933-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004934
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004935- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4936 is built with libdb3 if available.
4937
4938- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4939
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004940C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004941-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004942
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004943- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4944 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4945 PySequence_Size().
4946
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004947- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4948
4949- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4950 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4951 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4952
4953- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4954 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4955
4956- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4957 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4958
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004959New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004960-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004961
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004962- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4963 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4964
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004965- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4966 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4967
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004968- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4969
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004970Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004971-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004972
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004973- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4974 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4975
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004976Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004977-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004978
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004979Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004980----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004981
4982- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4983 removed completely in the next release.
4984
4985- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4986 OSX.
4987
4988- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4989 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4990
4991- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4992
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004993
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004994What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004995===========================
4996
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004997*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4998
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004999Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005000--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005001
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005002- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005003 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005004 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005005 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5006 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005007 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5008 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005009 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5010 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005011
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005012- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5013 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5014
5015- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5016 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5017
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005018Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005019-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005020
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005021- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5022 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5023 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5024 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5025 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5026 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5027 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5028 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5029
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005030- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5031 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5032 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5033 example).
5034
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005035- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005036 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005037 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005038 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005039
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005040- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5041 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5042 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005043 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005044
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005045- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5046 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5047 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5048 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5049 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5050 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5051
5052 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5053
5054 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5055
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005056Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005057-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005058
5059- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5060
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005061- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5062
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005063- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5064 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005065
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005066- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5067 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5068 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5069 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5070 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5071 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005072 attributes.
5073
5074- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5075 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5076 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005077
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005078- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5079 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5080 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005081
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005082- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5083 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5084 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005085 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5086 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5087
5088- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5089 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005090
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005091Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005092-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005093
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005094- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5095 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5096
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005097- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5098 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5099 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5100 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5101
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005102- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5103 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5104 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5105 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5106
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005107 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5108 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5109 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5110 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5111 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5112 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5113 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5114 without losing information).
5115
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005116- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005117 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5118 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5119 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5120 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5121 module).
5122
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005123 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005124 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5125 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5126 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5127 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005128
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005129- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005130 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5131 encoding.
5132
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005133- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5134 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5135
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005136- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005137 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5138
5139- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5140 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5141 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5142 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5143
5144- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5145
5146- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5147 ON, and OFF.
5148
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005149- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5150 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5151
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005152Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005153-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005154
5155- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5156 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5157 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005158
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005159- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5160 been added: -X and -E.
5161
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005162Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005163-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005164
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005165- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5166 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5167
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005168C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005169-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005170
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005171- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5172 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5173 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5174 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5175 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5176
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005177- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5178 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5179 as long) arguments.
5180
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005181- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5182 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5183 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5184 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5185 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5186 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5187
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005188- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5189 input.
5190
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005191New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005192-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005193
5194Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005195-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005196
5197Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005198-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005199
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005200- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5201 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5202 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5203
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005204- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5205 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5206 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005207 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005208
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005209 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5210 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5211 import signal
5212 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005213
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005214 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005215 while 1:
5216 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005217 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005218 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5219 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5220 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5221 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005222
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005223
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005224What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5225===========================
5226
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005227*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5228
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005229Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005230--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005231
5232- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5233 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5234 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5235
5236- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5237 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5238 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5239 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5240 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5241 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5242 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005243
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005244- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005245 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005246 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5247 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5248 associate a docstring with a property.
5249
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005250- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5251 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5252 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5253 other built-in object types.
5254
5255- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5256 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5257 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5258 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5259 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5260
5261- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5262 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5263
5264- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5265 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005266 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005267 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5268 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5269 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5270 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5271 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5272
5273- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5274 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5275 class.
5276
5277- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5278 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5279 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5280 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5281
5282- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5283 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5284 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5285 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5286
5287- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5288 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5289
5290- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5291 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5292 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5293 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5294 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005295 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005296 with the same value as s.
5297
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005298- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5299
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005300Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005301----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005302
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005303- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5304
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005305- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5306 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5307 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5308 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5309 objects.
5310
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005311- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5312 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005313 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5314 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5315
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005316- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5317 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5318 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5319
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005320Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005321-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005322
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005323- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5324 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5325 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5326 by the instances.
5327
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005328- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5329 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5330 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5331
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005332- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5333 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5334 before the entire comparison is complete.
5335
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005336- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5337 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5338 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5339
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005340- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5341 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5342 getwriter().
5343
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005344- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5345 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5346
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005347- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005348 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5349 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5350
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005351- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5352 iterable object.
5353
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005354- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5355 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005356
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005357- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5358 authentication.
5359
5360- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5361 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005362
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005363- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005364 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5365 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5366 a sample driver.)
5367
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005368Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005369-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005370
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005371- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5372 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5373 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5374 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5375 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5376 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5377 kernel has large file support.
5378
5379- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5380 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5381 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5382 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5383 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5384
5385- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5386 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5387 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5388
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005389C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005390-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005391
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005392- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5393 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5394
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005395New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005396-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005397
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005398- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5399 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5400
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005401Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005402-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005403
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005404- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5405 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5406 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5407 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5408 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5409
5410- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5411 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5412 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5413 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5414
5415- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5416 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5417
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005418Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005419-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005420
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005421- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005422 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5423 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005424
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005425
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005426What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5427===========================
5428
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005429*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5430
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005431Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005432----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005433
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005434- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5435 big to represent as a C double.
5436
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005437- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5438 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5439 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5440 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5441 restriction).
5442
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005443- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5444 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5445 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5446 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5447 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5448
5449 >>> dir([])
5450 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5451 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5452 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5453 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5454 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5455 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5456 'reverse', 'sort']
5457
5458 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5459
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005460- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005461 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5462 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5463 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5464 OverflowError exception.
5465
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005466- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005467 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005468 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5469 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5470 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5471 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5472 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005473 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005474 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5475 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5476
5477 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5478 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5479 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5480 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005481
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005482- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005483 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5484 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5485 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5486 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5487 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5488 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5489 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5490 once it is created.
5491
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005492- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5493 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5494 (key, value) pairs.
5495
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005496- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005497 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5498 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5499
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005500- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5501 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5502 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5503 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5504 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005505
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005506- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005507 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5508 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5509
5510 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5511
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005512- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005513 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5514
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005515Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005516-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005517
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005518- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005519 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5520 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005521
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005522- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5523 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5524 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5525 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5526 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5527 in this area anymore).
5528
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005529- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5530 threading.Timer.
5531
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005532- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5533 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5534
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005535- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005536 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5537
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005538- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005539 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5540 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5541 converted to Python longs.
5542
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005543- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005544 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5545
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005546- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5547 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5548 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5549
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005550Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005551-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005552
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005553- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5554 division operators as per PEP 238.
5555
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005556Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005557-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005558
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005559- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5560 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5561 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5562 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5563
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005564C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005565-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005566
5567- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005568
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005569- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5570 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005571 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005572
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005573 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5574 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005575 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005576 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005577
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005578- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005579 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5580 module:
5581
5582 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005583
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005584 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5585 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005586
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005587 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5588 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005589
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005590 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5591
5592 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5593
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005594- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005595 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5596 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5597 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005598
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005599New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005600-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005601
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005602- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5603 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5604 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5605 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5606 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005607
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005608Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005609-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005610
5611Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005612-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005613
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005614- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5615 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5616 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5617 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005618 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5619 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5620 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5621 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5622 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005623
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005624- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005625 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5626
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005627
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005628What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5629===========================
5630
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005631*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5632
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005633Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005634-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005635
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005636- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5637 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5638
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005639- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5640 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5641 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005642
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005643- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5644 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5645 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5646 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005647
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005648- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5649
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005650- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005651
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005652Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005653-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005654
5655- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005656 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005657 the module docstring for details.
5658
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005659Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005660-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005661
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005662- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005663 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5664 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5665 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005666
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005667- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5668 Nick Mathewson.
5669
5670Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005671----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005672
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005673- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5674 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5675 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5676 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5677 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5678 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5679 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5680 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5681
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005682- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5683 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5684 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5685 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5686
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005687- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5688 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5689 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5690 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5691 come a long way).
5692
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005693- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5694 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5695 write filters for these warnings).
5696
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005697- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5698 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5699 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5700 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5701 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5702
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005703- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5704 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5705 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5706 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5707 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5708 older distribution.
5709
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005710Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005711-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005712
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005713- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5714 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005715 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005716
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005717- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5718 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5719 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5720
5721- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5722
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005723- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5724
5725- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5726
5727- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5728
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005729- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005730
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005731- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5732
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005733New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005734-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005735
5736C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005737-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005738
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005739- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5740 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5741 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5742 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5743 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5744 against buffer overruns.
5745
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005746- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005747 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5748 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005749 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5750 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5751 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5752
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005753- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5754 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5755 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5756 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5757 deprecated.
5758
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005759Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005760-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005761
5762- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5763 relevant is found.
5764
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005765
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005766What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005767===========================
5768
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005769*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5770
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005771Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005772----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005773
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005774- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5775 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5776 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5777 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5778 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5779 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5780 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5781 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005782 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005783 repaired.
5784
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005785- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005786 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005787 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5788 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5789 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5790 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5791 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5792 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5793 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5794 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5795
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005796- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5797 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5798 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5799 leading BMO character).
5800
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005801- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5802 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5803 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5804
5805 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5806 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5807 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005808
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005809 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5810 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5811 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5812 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5813 for various simple to use conversions.
5814
5815 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5816 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5817
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005818 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5819 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5820 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5821 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5822 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5823 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5824 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5825 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5826 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5827 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5828 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5829 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5830 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5831 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5832 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005833
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005834- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5835 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5836 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005837 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005838 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005839
5840 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005841 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5842 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5843 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5844 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5845 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005846 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5847 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005848
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005849 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5850 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5851 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005852 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005853
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005854- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5855 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5856 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5857 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5858 floating arithmetic,
5859
5860 x = 9007199254740992.0
5861 print long(x)
5862
5863 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5864 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5865 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5866 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5867 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5868 functions are of good quality).
5869
5870 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5871 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5872 algorithms to break.
5873
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005874- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5875 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5876 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5877 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5878 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5879 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5880 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5881 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5882 order.
5883
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005884- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5885 operation along the most common code paths.
5886
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005887- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5888 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5889
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005890- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5891 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5892 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5893 {}.update(UserDict())
5894
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005895- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5896 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5897 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5898 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5899 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5900 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5901 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5902 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5903
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005904- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005905 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005906
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005907 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005908 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5909 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005910 join() method of strings
5911 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005912 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5913 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005914 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005915 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005916
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005917- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5918 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5919
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005920- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5921 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5922
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005923- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5924 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5925 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5926 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5927
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005928- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5929 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005930 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005931 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5932 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005933
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005934- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5935
5936
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005937Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005938-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005939
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005940- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005941 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005942 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5943 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5944
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005945- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5946 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5947
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005948- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5949 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5950 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5951 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5952
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005953- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5954 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5955 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5956
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005957- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5958
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005959- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5960
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005961- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5962 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5963 that are still imported into string.py).
5964
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005965- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5966
5967- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5968 Now it does.
5969
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005970- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5971
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005972- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5973 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5974 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5975 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5976 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005977 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5978 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005979
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005980- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5981 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5982 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5983 'help(object)'.
5984
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005985Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005986-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005987
5988- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005989 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005990 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5991 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5992
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005993- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005994 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5995 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005996
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005997C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005998-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005999
6000- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6001 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006002
6003----
6004
6005**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**