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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
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Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10*Release date: DD-MMM-YYYY*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +000015- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
16
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +000017- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
18 new documentation and modified profiler and bdb modules for more details
19
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +000020- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
21
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +000022- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
23
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +000024- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
25 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
26
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +000027- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
28 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
29 Fixes bug #858016 .
30
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +000031- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
32 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
33 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
34
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +000035- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
36 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
37 improves their performance (about 35%).
38
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +000039- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
40 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
41 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
42
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +000043- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
44 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
45 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
46 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
47
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +000048- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
49 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
50 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
51 length is not known).
52
53- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
54 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +000055 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
56 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +000057 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
58
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +000059- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
60 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
61
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +000062- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
63 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
64 keyword arguments.
65
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +000066- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
67 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
68 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
69
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +000070- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
71 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
72 cases.
73
74- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
75 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
76 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
77 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
78 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
79 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
80 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
81 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
82 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
83 a release build.
84
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +000085- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
86 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
87
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +000088- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +000089 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +000090
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +000091- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
92 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
93 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
94 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
95 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
96 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
97 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
98 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
99 destroyed.
100
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000101- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
102 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
103 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
104 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
105 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
106 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
107 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
108 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
109
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000110- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
111 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
112 character other than a space.
113
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000114- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
115 by the function object or by the method object, the function
116 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
117 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
118 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
119 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
120 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
121 attributes with the same name.
122
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000123- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
124 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
125 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
126 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
127 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
128 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
129 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
130 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
131 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
132 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
133 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
134 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
135 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
136 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000137
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000138- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
139 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
140 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
141 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
142 This has been repaired.
143
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000144- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
145
146- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
147
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000148- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
149 over a sequence.
150
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000151- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000152 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000153
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000154- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
155
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000156- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
157 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
158 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
159 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
160 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
161 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
162 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
163 records with equal keys is unchanged).
164
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000165- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
166 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
167 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
168
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000169- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
170 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
171 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
172 freelist.
173
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000174- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
175 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
176
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000177- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
178 number.
179
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000180- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
181 a TypeError exception.
182
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000183- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
184 820195.
185
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000186- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
187 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
188 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
189
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000190- str and unicode builtin types now have rsplit() method that is
191 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
192 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +0000193
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +0000194- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
195 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
196 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
197
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000198- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
199 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000200 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000201
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000202- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +0000203 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
204 the first call.
205
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000206
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000207Extension modules
208-----------------
209
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +0000210- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
211 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
212
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +0000213- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
214 fewer false positives.
215
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +0000216- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
217 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
218
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +0000219- Bug #920575: A problem that _locale module segfaults on
220 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
221
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +0000222- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
223 scheme has been updated the same as for list objects. The improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +0000224 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
225 Also, array.extend() now accepts any iterable argument for repeated
226 appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +0000227
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +0000228- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
229 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
230 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
231 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
232
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +0000233- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
234 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
235 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
236 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
237 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
238 #897625.
239
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +0000240- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
241 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
242
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +0000243- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
244 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
245 and pops on either side of the deque.
246
247- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
248 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
249
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +0000250- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
251 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
252 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
253 other functions that expect a function argument.
254
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +0000255- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
256
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000257- os.getsid was added.
258
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +0000259- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
260 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
261 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
262
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +0000263- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
264
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +0000265- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
266
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +0000267- readline.clear_history was added.
268
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +0000269- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
270
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +0000271- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
272
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +0000273- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
274
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +0000275- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
276
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +0000277- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
278
279- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
280
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +0000281- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
282
283- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
284
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000285- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
286 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
287 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
288
289- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
290 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
291 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
292 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
293 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
294 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
295 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
296
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +0000297- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
298 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
299 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
300 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000301
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000302- itertools now has a new function, tee() which produces two independent
303 iterators from a single iterable.
304
305- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
306 of raising a TypeError exception.
307
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +0000308- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
309 as parameter.
310
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000311Library
312-------
313
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000314- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
315 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
316 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
317
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +0000318- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
319 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
320 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
321
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +0000322- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
323
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +0000324- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
325
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +0000326- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
327 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
328
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +0000329- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
330 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
331 type pattern with the same value exists.
332
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +0000333- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
334 when run from the command prompt).
335
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000336- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
337 not taken into consideration when caching value.
338
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +0000339- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
340 default sort).
341
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +0000342- Added global runctx function to profile module
343
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +0000344- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
345
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +0000346- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
347
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +0000348- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
349
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +0000350- The encodings package will now applies codec name aliases
351 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
352 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
353 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
354 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
355 accordingly.
356
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +0000357- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
358 decoding standards.
359
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +0000360- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
361 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
362 called for all requests.
363
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +0000364- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
365 they are passed to the compiler.
366
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +0000367- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
368 indent, width and depth.
369
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +0000370- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
371 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
372
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +0000373- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
374 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
375
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +0000376- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
377
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +0000378- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
379
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000380- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
381
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +0000382- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
383 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
384
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +0000385- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
386 for better performance
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +0000387
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +0000388- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
389 a string).
390
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +0000391- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
392
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +0000393- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
394
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +0000395- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
396
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +0000397- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
398
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +0000399- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
400 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
401 list of fieldnames.
402
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +0000403- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
404 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
405
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +0000406- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
407
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +0000408- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
409 empty lists.
410
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +0000411- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
412 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
413 and shelves.
414
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +0000415- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
416 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
417
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000418- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +0000419 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
420 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000421
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +0000422- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
423 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +0000424 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +0000425
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000426- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +0000427 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
428 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
429
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000430- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
431 and removed in Py2.4.
432
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +0000433- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
434
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +0000435- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
436
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000437Tools/Demos
438-----------
439
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +0000440- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
441 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
442
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +0000443- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
444
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +0000445- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
446 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
447 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
448 destination in situations where both files are given.
449
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +0000450- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
451 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
452 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
453 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
454
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +0000455- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
456
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +0000457- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
458 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
459 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
460 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
461 now.
462
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000463- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
464 in effect
465
466- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
467 C-c C-h
468
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +0000469- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
470 -d option was given.
471
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000472Build
473-----
474
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +0000475- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
476 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
477
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +0000478- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
479 removed.
480
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +0000481- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
482 supported (see PEP 11).
483
484- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
485
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +0000486- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
487
488- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
489 (see PEP 11).
490
491- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
492 sizeof(char) must be 1.
493
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000494C API
495-----
496
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000497- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
498 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +0000499 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
500 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000501
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +0000502- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
503 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
504
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +0000505- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
506 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
507 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
508 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
509 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
510
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +0000511- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
512 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
513 about 10% faster.
514
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +0000515- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
516 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
517
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +0000518- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
519 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
520 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
521 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
522
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000523New platforms
524-------------
525
526Tests
527-----
528
529Windows
530-------
531
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +0000532- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
533 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
534 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
535 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
536
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +0000537- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
538 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
539 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
540
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000541Mac
542----
543
544
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000545What's New in Python 2.3 final?
546===============================
547
548*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
549
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000550IDLE
551----
552
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +0000553- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
554 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
555 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
556 context-menu actions.
557
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000558- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
559 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
560 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
561 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
562 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
563 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
564 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
565 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
566 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
567
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000568
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000569What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
570=============================================
571
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +0000572*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000573
574Core and builtins
575-----------------
576
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000577- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000578 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000579 comment at the end are still unsupported.
580
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000581Extension modules
582-----------------
583
584- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
585 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
586 than once. This has been fixed.
587
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +0000588- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
589 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
590 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
591 call.
592
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000593- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
594
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000595Library
596-------
597
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000598- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
599 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
600
601- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
602 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
603 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
604 restored.
605
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000606IDLE
607----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000608
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000609- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000610
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000611Build
612-----
613
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000614- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
615 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
616
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000617C API
618-----
619
620Windows
621-------
622
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +0000623- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
624 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
625
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000626- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
627
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000628Mac
629---
630
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000631- Various fixes to pimp.
632
633- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
634
635- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
636 more problems than it solves.
637
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000638
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000639What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
640=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000641
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +0000642*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
643
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000644Core and builtins
645-----------------
646
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +0000647- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
648 by sys.setcheckinterval().
649
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000650- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
651 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000652 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000653
654- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
655 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
656 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000657 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000658
659- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
660 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000661
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000662- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
663 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
664 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
665
666- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000667 770247.
668
669- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000670
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000671Extension modules
672-----------------
673
674- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
675 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
676
677- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
678
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000679- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
680
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +0000681- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
682 contained within the _strptime module.
683
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000684- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
685 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
686
687- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000688 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
689
690- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
691 the find_class attribute, if present.
692
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000693- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000694
695 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
696 (SF bug 763298).
697
698 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +0000699 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
700 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
701 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000702
703 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
704
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000705Library
706-------
707
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000708- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
709
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +0000710- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
711 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
712 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
713 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
714 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
715 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
716 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
717 or Tester().
718
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000719- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
720 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
721 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
722 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
723 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
724 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
725 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
726 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
727 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +0000728
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000729 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +0000730
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +0000731- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
732 weren't before was an oversight.
733
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000734- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
735 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
736
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +0000737- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
738 when there are no lines.
739
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +0000740- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
741 which could occur with Tk 8.4
742
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000743- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
744 to child processes.
745
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000746- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
747
748- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
749
750- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
751 xmlrpclib.
752
753- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
754 responses.
755
756- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
757 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
758
759- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
760 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
761 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
762
763- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
764 used as patterns.
765
766- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
767 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
768 than Tk 8.3.
769
770- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
771
772- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000773
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000774Tools/Demos
775-----------
776
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000777- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
778
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +0000779- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
780
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000781- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000782
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000783Build
784-----
785
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000786- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
787
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000788- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
789
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000790- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
791 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000792
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000793- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
794 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
795 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000796
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000797C API
798-----
799
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000800- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
801 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
802
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000803Windows
804-------
805
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000806- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
807 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
808 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
809 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
810 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
811 Python exception ::
812
813 thread.error: can't start new thread
814
815 is raised now.
816
817- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
818 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
819 instead of from DLL teardown.
820
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000821Mac
822---
823
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000824- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +0000825 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000826 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
827 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
828 the executable in the bundle.
829
830- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000831
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +0000832- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
833
834- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
835 on Panther.
836
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000837What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
838================================
839
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +0000840*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000841
842Core and builtins
843-----------------
844
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +0000845- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
846 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
847 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
848 with the -i option.
849
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +0000850- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
851 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
852
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000853- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
854 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
855
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +0000856- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
857 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
858 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
859 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
860 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
861 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
862 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
863 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
864 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
865 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
866 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
867 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
868 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +0000869
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000870- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
871 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
872 embedded in a lambda expression.
873
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +0000874- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
875 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
876 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
877 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
878 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
879
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000880- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
881 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
882 matches the restriction on classic classes.
883
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +0000884- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
885 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
886
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +0000887- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
888 It's writable again.
889
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000890- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
891 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
892 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000893 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000894
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000895- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
896 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
897 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
898
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000899Extension modules
900-----------------
901
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +0000902- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
903 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
904
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000905- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
906 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
907 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
908 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
909
910- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
911 collection.
912
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +0000913- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
914 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
915 unique within a single program run.
916
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +0000917- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
918 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
919
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +0000920- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
921 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
922
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +0000923- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
924 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +0000925
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +0000926- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
927
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +0000928- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
929 Fixes SF bug #730685.
930
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +0000931- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
932 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
933 for many BSD-derived systems.
934
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000935
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000936Library
937-------
938
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +0000939- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
940 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
941 primary ones:
942
943 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
944 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
945 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
946
947 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
948 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
949 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
950 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
951 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
952 framework features (which doctest lacks).
953
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +0000954- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
955 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
956 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
957 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
958 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
959 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
960 argument.
961
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000962- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
963 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
964 in the archive.
965
966- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
967 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
968
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +0000969- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
970 569574).
971
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000972- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
973 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
974 no more.
975
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000976- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
977 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
978 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
979 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
980 code coverage.
981
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +0000982- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
983 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
984 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000985 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
986 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +0000987
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +0000988- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
989 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
990 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +0000991 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +0000992
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +0000993- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
994
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +0000995- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
996 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
997 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
998 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
999
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001000- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1001 handling.
1002
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001003- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1004 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1005
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001006- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1007 in socket.py.
1008
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001009- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1010
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001011- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1012 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1013 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1014 opener with proxy support.
1015
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001016- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1017
1018- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1019
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001020Tools/Demos
1021-----------
1022
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001023- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1024
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001025- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1026
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001027- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1028 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001029
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001030- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1031 files.
1032
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001033Build
1034-----
1035
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001036- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001037 different root directory.
1038
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001039C API
1040-----
1041
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001042- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1043 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1044 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1045 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1046 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1047 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1048 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1049 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1050 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1051 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1052
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001053- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1054 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1055 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1056 from Python.
1057
1058
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001059New platforms
1060-------------
1061
1062None this time.
1063
1064Tests
1065-----
1066
1067- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1068 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1069
1070Windows
1071-------
1072
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001073- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1074
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001075- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1076 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1077 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1078 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1079 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1080 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1081 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1082 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1083 that's what it's for.
1084
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001085Mac
1086---
1087
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001088- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1089 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1090 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1091 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001092- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1093 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1094- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001095
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001096SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1097------------------------------------
1098
1099430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1100598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1101622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1102661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1103683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1104697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1105713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1106724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1107727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1108729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1109730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1110731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1111732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1112733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1113735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1114740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1115744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1116745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1117747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1118749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1119751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
1120753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
1121755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
1122757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
1123760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
1124
1125
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001126What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
1127================================
1128
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00001129*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001130
1131Core and builtins
1132-----------------
1133
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00001134- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
1135 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
1136
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00001137- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
1138 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
1139 and cannot be strings).
1140
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00001141- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
1142 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
1143 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
1144 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
1145
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00001146- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
1147 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
1148 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
1149 Python itself.
1150
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00001151- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
1152 the referenced object, if it has one.
1153
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00001154- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
1155 the thread started at
1156 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
1157
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00001158- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
1159 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
1160 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
1161 placed on a list index.
1162
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00001163- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
1164 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
1165 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
1166 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
1167
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001168- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
1169 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
1170 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
1171 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
1172 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
1173 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
1174 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
1175
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00001176- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
1177 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
1178 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
1179 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
1180 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
1181
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00001182- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
1183 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00001184
1185- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
1186 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
1187 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
1188 #693195.)
1189
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00001190- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
1191 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001192
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001193- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00001194 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001195 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
1196 interpreter executions, would fail.
1197
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001198- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00001199 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00001200 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001201
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001202Extension modules
1203-----------------
1204
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00001205- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
1206 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
1207 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
1208 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
1209
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00001210- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
1211 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
1212
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00001213- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
1214 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
1215 and Greg Chapman.)
1216
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001217- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
1218 recursively.
1219
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00001220- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00001221 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
1222 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
1223 leaks.
1224
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00001225- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
1226
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00001227- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
1228 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
1229 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
1230 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
1231 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
1232 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
1233 #705836.
1234
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001235- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00001236 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
1237
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00001238- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
1239 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
1240 See SF bug #692416.
1241
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00001242- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
1243 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
1244
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00001245- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
1246 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
1247 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001248
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001249- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00001250 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
1251 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
1252
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00001253- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
1254 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
1255 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
1256 timeouts to work properly.
1257
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001258Library
1259-------
1260
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001261- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
1262 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
1263 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
1264 future release.
1265
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00001266- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
1267 for querying platform dependent features.
1268
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00001269- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00001270
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00001271- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
1272 pickle protocol versions.
1273
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00001274- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
1275 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
1276 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
1277
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00001278- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
1279
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00001280- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
1281 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
1282 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
1283 modules.
1284
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00001285- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
1286 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
1287 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
1288
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001289- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
1290 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
1291
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00001292- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
1293 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
1294 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
1295
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001296- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00001297 MS Office extensions.
1298
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00001299- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
1300 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
1301
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00001302- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
1303 execution speed of expressions and statements.
1304
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001305- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
1306 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
1307 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
1308 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
1309 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
1310 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
1311
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001312- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
1313 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
1314 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001315
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00001316- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
1317 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
1318 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
1319
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00001320- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
1321
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00001322- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
1323 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
1324 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
1325
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001326Tools/Demos
1327-----------
1328
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00001329- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
1330 See the module docstring for details.
1331
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001332Build
1333-----
1334
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00001335- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
1336 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001337
1338C API
1339-----
1340
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001341- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
1342
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00001343- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
1344 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
1345 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
1346
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001347- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
1348 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001349
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001350 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
1351 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
1352 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00001353
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00001354- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00001355 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
1356
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00001357- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
1358 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
1359 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001360
1361New platforms
1362-------------
1363
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001364None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001365
1366Tests
1367-----
1368
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00001369- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
1370 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001371
1372Windows
1373-------
1374
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00001375- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
1376 function.
1377
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00001378- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
1379 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001380
1381Mac
1382---
1383
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001384- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
1385 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00001386
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00001387- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
1388 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001389
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00001390- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
1391 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
1392 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001393
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001394- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00001395 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
1396 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001397
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001398- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
1399 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001400
1401
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001402What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
1403=================================
1404
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001405*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001406
1407Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001408-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001409
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00001410- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
1411 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
1412 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
1413
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00001414- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
1415 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
1416 (SF patch #664376.)
1417
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001418- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
1419 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
1420 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
1421 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
1422 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
1423 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00001424 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001425
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001426- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
1427 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
1428 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
1429 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001430 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001431
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00001432- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
1433 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
1434 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
1435 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
1436 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
1437 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
1438 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
1439 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
1440 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
1441 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
1442 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
1443
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00001444- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
1445 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
1446 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
1447 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
1448 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
1449 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
1450
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00001451- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
1452 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
1453
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00001454- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
1455 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
1456 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
1457 case.)
1458
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00001459- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
1460 passed as unicode strings.
1461
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00001462- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
1463 See SF bug #683467.
1464
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00001465- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
1466 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
1467
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00001468- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
1469
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00001470- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
1471
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00001472- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
1473 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
1474 arguments.
1475
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00001476- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
1477 See SF bug #667147.
1478
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001479- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001480 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001481 See SF bug #676155.
1482
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001483- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001484 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001485 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
1486 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
1487 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
1488 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
1489 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
1490 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001491
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001492Extension modules
1493-----------------
1494
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001495- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
1496 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1497 tp_as_number pointer.
1498
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001499- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
1500 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
1501 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
1502 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
1503 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
1504
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001505- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
1506
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00001507- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
1508
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001509- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00001510 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001511 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
1512 patch #678531.)
1513
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00001514- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
1515 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
1516
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00001517- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
1518 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
1519
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00001520- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
1521
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00001522- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
1523 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
1524 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
1525
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001526- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
1527
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001528- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
1529 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
1530
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001531- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001532
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001533- datetime changes:
1534
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00001535 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
1536
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00001537 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
1538 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
1539 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
1540 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
1541 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
1542 now.
1543
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001544 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001545 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
1546 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001547
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001548 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001549 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001550 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
1551 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
1552 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
1553 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001554
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001555 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
1556 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
1557 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001558 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
1559
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001560 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
1561 by a later example coded by Guido.
1562
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001563 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001564 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
1565 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
1566 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001567 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
1568 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
1569
1570 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
1571 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
1572 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
1573 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
1574 tzinfo subclass instance.
1575
1576 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
1577 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
1578 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
1579 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
1580 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
1581 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
1582 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
1583 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001584
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001585 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
1586 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
1587 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
1588 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
1589 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001590 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
1591
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001592 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001593
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001594 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
1595 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
1596 as a naive datetime object.
1597
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00001598 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
1599 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
1600 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
1601
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00001602 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
1603 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
1604 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
1605 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
1606 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
1607 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
1608 comparison.
1609
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001610 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
1611 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
1612 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
1613 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001614 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001615
1616 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001617
1618 and ::
1619
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001620 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
1621
1622 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
1623 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
1624 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
1625 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
1626
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00001627 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
1628 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
1629 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
1630 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
1631 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
1632
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001633 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
1634 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00001635 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
1636 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001637
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001638Library
1639-------
1640
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001641- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
1642 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
1643
1644- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
1645 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
1646 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
1647 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
1648 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
1649 See PEP 307 for details.
1650
1651- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
1652 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
1653
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001654- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
1655 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001656 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001657 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
1658 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001659 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001660
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00001661- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
1662 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
1663
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001664- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
1665 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
1666 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
1667
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00001668- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
1669
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00001670- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
1671 exception.
1672
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00001673- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
1674 class.
1675
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00001676- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
1677 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
1678 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
1679
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00001680- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
1681 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
1682
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001683- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00001684 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
1685 See SF bug #659228.
1686
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00001687- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
1688 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
1689 See SF patch #651082.
1690
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00001691- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001692
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00001693- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
1694 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
1695
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001696- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001697 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001698
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00001699- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
1700 DOS paths from other platforms.
1701
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001702Tools/Demos
1703-----------
1704
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001705- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
1706 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
1707 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
1708 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
1709 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
1710 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
1711 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
1712 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
1713 example:
1714
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00001715 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
1716 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001717
1718 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
1719
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001720
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001721Build
1722-----
1723
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001724- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
1725 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
1726 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001727 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
1728
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001729 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
1730
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00001731- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
1732 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
1733 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
1734 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
1735 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
1736 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
1737 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
1738 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
1739 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
1740
1741- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
1742 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
1743 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
1744 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
1745
1746- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
1747 from the Tools/scripts directory.
1748
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001749C API
1750-----
1751
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001752- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
1753 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00001754
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001755- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
1756 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1757 tp_as_number pointer.
1758
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00001759- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
1760 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
1761 (SF #681367)
1762
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00001763- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
1764 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
1765 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
1766 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00001767
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001768Tests
1769-----
1770
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00001771- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001772 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
1773 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
1774 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
1775 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
1776 pydoc.)
1777
1778- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
1779
1780- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001781
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001782Windows
1783-------
1784
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001785- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
1786 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
1787 time).
1788
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00001789- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
1790 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
1791
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001792- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
1793 release without strong cryptography.
1794
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001795- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001796 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001797
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001798- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
1799 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
1800
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001801Mac
1802---
1803
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001804- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
1805 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001806
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00001807- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
1808 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
1809 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001810
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001811- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
1812 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001813
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001814- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
1815 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
1816 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
1817 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001818
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001819- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00001820 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
1821 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
1822 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001823
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001824
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001825What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001826=================================
1827
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00001828*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001829
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001830Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001831--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001832
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00001833- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
1834
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001835- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
1836 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001837 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001838 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001839 a different meaning than before.
1840
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001841- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001842 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001843 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001844
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001845- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001846 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001847 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001848
1849- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
1850 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
1851 and deallocation.
1852
1853- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
1854 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
1855
1856- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
1857 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
1858 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
1859 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
1860 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
1861
1862- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
1863 now detected by the garbage collector.
1864
1865- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
1866 [SF bug 519621]
1867
1868- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
1869 identifier.
1870
1871- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
1872 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
1873 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
1874 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
1875 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
1876 [SF bug 563060]
1877
1878- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
1879 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
1880 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
1881 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
1882 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
1883
1884- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
1885 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
1886 not called. [SF bug #537450]
1887
1888- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
1889
1890- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
1891 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
1892 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
1893 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
1894 state of the slots would be lost.)
1895
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001896Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001897-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001898
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001899- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001900 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
1901 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
1902 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
1903 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001904 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
1905 Jython 2.1.
1906
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001907- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001908 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001909 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
1910 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
1911 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
1912 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
1913 these, see PEP 302.
1914
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001915- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
1916 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
1917 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
1918
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00001919- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
1920 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
1921 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
1922
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00001923- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
1924 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
1925 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
1926
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00001927- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
1928 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
1929 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
1930 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
1931 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
1932 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
1933 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
1934 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
1935 releases or implementations.
1936
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001937- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00001938 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
1939 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001940
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00001941- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
1942 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
1943
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00001944- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
1945 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
1946 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
1947
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00001948- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
1949 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
1950
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001951- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
1952 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001953 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
1954 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001955
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00001956- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
1957 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
1958 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
1959 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
1960 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
1961
1962 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
1963 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
1964 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
1965 pattern.
1966
1967 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
1968 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
1969 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
1970 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
1971
1972 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
1973 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
1974 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
1975 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
1976 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
1977 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
1978
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00001979- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
1980 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
1981 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
1982 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
1983 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
1984 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
1985 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
1986 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00001987
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00001988- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
1989 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
1990 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
1991 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
1992 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00001993 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
1994 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
1995 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
1996 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
1997 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
1998 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
1999 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002000
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002001- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2002 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2003
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002004- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2005 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2006 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2007 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2008 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2009 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2010 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2011 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2012 to Zack Weinberg!
2013
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002014- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2015 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2016 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2017 type. This has been fixed now.
2018
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002019- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2020 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2021 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2022
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002023- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2024 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2025 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2026 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2027 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2028 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2029 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2030 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002031 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002032
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002033- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2034 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2035 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002036
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002037- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2038 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2039 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2040 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2041 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2042 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2043 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2044 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002045 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002046 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2047 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2048
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002049- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2050 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2051 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2052 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2053 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2054 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2055 this.)
2056
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002057- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2058 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002059 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002060 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002061 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2062 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002063 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2064 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002065
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002066- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2067 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2068 currently running.
2069
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002070- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2071 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2072 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2073 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2074
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002075- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2076 as directory names.
2077
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002078- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2079 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2080
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002081- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2082 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2083
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002084- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002085 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2086 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002087
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002088- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2089 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2090 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2091 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2092 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2093
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002094- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2095 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2096 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2097 removed.
2098
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002099- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2100 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2101 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2102
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002103- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2104 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2105 to __debug__.
2106
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002107- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2108 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2109 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2110
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002111- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2112 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2113 deprecated now.
2114
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002115- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2116 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2117 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002118
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002119- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
2120 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
2121 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
2122 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
2123 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00002124
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00002125- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
2126 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
2127
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002128- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
2129 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
2130 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002131 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002132 is backward compatible.
2133
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00002134- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
2135 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
2136 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
2137 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
2138 could access a pointer to freed memory.
2139
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00002140- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
2141 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
2142 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
2143 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
2144 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
2145 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002146
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00002147- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
2148 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
2149
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002150- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
2151 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
2152
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002153- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
2154 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
2155 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
2156 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
2157 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
2158
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00002159- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
2160 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
2161 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
2162
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002163- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00002164 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
2165
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00002166- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
2167 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
2168 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00002169
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00002170- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
2171 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
2172
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00002173- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
2174 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
2175 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
2176
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00002177- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
2178
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002179Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002180-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002181
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00002182- Added three operators to the operator module:
2183 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
2184 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
2185 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
2186
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00002187- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
2188
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002189- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
2190 archives.
2191
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002192- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
2193 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
2194 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
2195
2196 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
2197
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002198- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
2199 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
2200 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00002201 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002202
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00002203- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
2204 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
2205 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
2206 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002207 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
2208 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
2209 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
2210 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00002211
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00002212- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
2213 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00002214
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00002215- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
2216
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00002217- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
2218 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
2219
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00002220- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
2221 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
2222 supported.
2223
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00002224- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
2225
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00002226- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
2227 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00002228
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00002229- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
2230 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
2231
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002232- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
2233
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002234- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
2235 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
2236
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00002237- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
2238 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
2239 functions but callable type objects.
2240
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002241- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002242 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002243 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002244
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00002245- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
2246 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00002247
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00002248- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
2249 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00002250
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00002251- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
2252 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
2253 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
2254 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
2255
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00002256- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
2257 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00002258
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00002259- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
2260 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
2261 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
2262 and __imul__.
2263
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00002264- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00002265 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
2266 is called.
2267
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00002268- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
2269 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
2270 interpreter was compiled.
2271
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002272- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
2273 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
2274 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002275 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002276 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
2277 1, not 2.
2278
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00002279- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
2280 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
2281 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
2282 limit.
2283
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00002284- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
2285 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
2286 bug #623464.
2287
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00002288- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
2289 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
2290 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
2291 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
2292
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002293Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002294-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002295
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00002296- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
2297
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00002298- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
2299 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
2300 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
2301 with Python 2.3a2.
2302
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00002303- os.path exposes getctime.
2304
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002305- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002306 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002307 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002308 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002309 unit tests of floating point results.
2310
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00002311- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
2312 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
2313 has been increased.
2314
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002315- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
2316 executed.
2317
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00002318- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
2319 postinstallation script.
2320
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00002321- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
2322 test the current module.
2323
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002324- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00002325 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
2326 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
2327 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
2328 this behavior needs to be controlled.
2329
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002330- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002331 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002332 Ward's Optik package.
2333
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002334- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
2335 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
2336 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
2337 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
2338
2339- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
2340 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002341 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002342
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00002343- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
2344 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
2345 shelf are binary pickles.
2346
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00002347- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
2348 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
2349
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00002350- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
2351 modules are iterators now.
2352
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00002353- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
2354 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
2355 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
2356 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
2357 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
2358 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002359
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00002360- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
2361 with their entity value.
2362
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00002363- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
2364
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002365- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
2366 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00002367
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002368- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
2369 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002370 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00002371
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00002372- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
2373 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
2374 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
2375 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
2376 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
2377 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
2378 main():
2379
2380 import locale
2381 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
2382
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00002383- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
2384 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
2385
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00002386- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
2387 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
2388 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
2389 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
2390 to the new standard.
2391
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00002392- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
2393 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
2394 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
2395 an extension to the database.
2396
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002397- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
2398 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
2399 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
2400 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00002401 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002402
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002403- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002404 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002405
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002406- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
2407 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
2408 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
2409 bounded integers.
2410
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00002411- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
2412 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
2413 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
2414 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
2415 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
2416 in existence.
2417
2418 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
2419 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
2420 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
2421 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
2422 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
2423 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
2424
2425 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
2426 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
2427 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
2428 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
2429
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00002430- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
2431 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
2432 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
2433
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00002434- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
2435
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002436- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
2437 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
2438 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
2439 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
2440
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00002441- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
2442 argument.
2443
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00002444- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
2445 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
2446 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
2447 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
2448 [SF patch 560794].
2449
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002450- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
2451 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
2452 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002453 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
2454 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
2455 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002456
2457- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
2458 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00002459
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00002460- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
2461 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
2462 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
2463 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00002464
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00002465- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
2466 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
2467 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
2468 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
2469 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
2470
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002471- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00002472
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00002473- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
2474
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00002475- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
2476 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
2477 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
2478 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
2479 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
2480 identical to None.
2481
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00002482- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
2483 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
2484 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
2485 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
2486 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
2487 results now.
2488
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00002489- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
2490 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
2491
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002492- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
2493 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
2494 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
2495 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
2496 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
2497 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
2498 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
2499 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
2500
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00002501- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
2502
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00002503- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
2504 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
2505
2506- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
2507 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
2508 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
2509 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
2510 and other systems.
2511
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002512- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
2513 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
2514 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
2515 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 +00002516 work well with these.
2517
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00002518- compileall now supports quiet operation.
2519
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002520- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00002521 connections.
2522
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00002523- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
2524 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
2525 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
2526
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00002527- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
2528 sets
2529
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00002530- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
2531 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
2532 name.
2533
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00002534- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
2535 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
2536 passed in.
2537
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002538- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00002539 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00002540 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
2541 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00002542
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00002543- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
2544
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00002545- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
2546
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00002547- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
2548 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
2549 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
2550
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002551- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
2552 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
2553 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
2554 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00002555 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002556
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002557- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002558 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002559 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002560
2561- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
2562 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
2563 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
2564
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002565- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00002566 the value of its expression argument.
2567
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002568- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
2569 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
2570 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
2571
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00002572- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
2573 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
2574 skipstone browser was included.
2575
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00002576- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
2577 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
2578
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002579Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002580-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002581
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00002582- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
2583 names in addition to accepting file names.
2584
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00002585- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
2586 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
2587 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
2588 still used and useful.)
2589
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00002590- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
2591 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
2592 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
2593 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00002594
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00002595- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
2596 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
2597 the generated binary.
2598
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002599Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002600-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002601
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00002602- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
2603
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002604- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
2605 except in the hands of experts.
2606
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002607- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002608 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
2609 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
2610 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00002611
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00002612- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
2613 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
2614 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
2615 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
2616 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
2617 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
2618 builds.
2619
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002620- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
2621 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
2622 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
2623 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
2624 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
2625 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
2626 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
2627 new type.
2628
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00002629- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00002630
2631 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
2632 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
2633 positive infinities.
2634
2635 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
2636 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
2637 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
2638 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
2639 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
2640 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
2641 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
2642
2643 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
2644
2645 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
2646
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00002647- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
2648 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
2649 size of the executable.
2650
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002651- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
2652 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
2653 configure script. On other platforms, remove
2654 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00002655
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00002656- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
2657
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00002658- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
2659 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
2660 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00002661
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00002662- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
2663 well as Unix.
2664
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00002665- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
2666 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
2667 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
2668 modules in the README file for details.
2669
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002670C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002671-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002672
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002673- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
2674 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002675 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00002676 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002677 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002678
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002679- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
2680 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
2681 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
2682 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
2683 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
2684 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002685 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002686 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
2687 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
2688 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
2689 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
2690 aligned.)
2691
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00002692- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
2693 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
2694 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
2695
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002696- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
2697 level.
2698
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00002699- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
2700 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
2701 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
2702 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
2703 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
2704
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00002705- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
2706 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
2707 code.
2708
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00002709- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
2710 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
2711 adjusting for negative indices.
2712
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002713- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
2714 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
2715 object.
2716
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00002717- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
2718 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
2719 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
2720
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002721- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
2722 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00002723
2724- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
2725
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00002726- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
2727 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
2728 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
2729 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
2730
2731- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
2732
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00002733- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002734
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002735- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00002736 without going through the buffer API.
2737
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002738- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00002739
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00002740- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
2741 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
2742 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
2743 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
2744
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002745- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
2746 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
2747
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002748- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002749 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
2750
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002751New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002752-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002753
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00002754- OpenVMS is now supported.
2755
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00002756- AtheOS is now supported.
2757
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00002758- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
2759
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00002760- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
2761
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002762Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002763-----
2764
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00002765- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
2766 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
2767 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002768
2769Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002770-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002771
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002772- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
2773 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
2774 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
2775 bugs.
2776 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002777 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00002778 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
2779 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002780 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002781
2782- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00002783 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002784
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00002785- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
2786 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
2787
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002788- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
2789 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002790 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002791 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
2792
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00002793- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
2794 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
2795 use files" uninstall option).
2796
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00002797- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
2798
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002799- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
2800 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
2801
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002802- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
2803 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
2804 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
2805
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002806- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
2807 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
2808 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
2809 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
2810 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002811 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
2812 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
2813 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002814
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002815- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002816 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002817 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
2818 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
2819 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
2820 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
2821 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
2822 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
2823 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
2824 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
2825 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
2826 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
2827 work around.
2828
2829- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
2830 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
2831 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
2832 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
2833 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
2834 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
2835 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
2836 specified with O_CREAT too).
2837
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002838Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002839----
2840
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002841- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002842
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00002843- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
2844 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
2845 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
2846
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002847- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
2848 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
2849 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
2850
2851- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
2852 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
2853 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
2854 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
2855 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
2856 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
2857 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
2858 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002859
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00002860- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
2861 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
2862 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002863
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002864- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
2865 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
2866 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
2867 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
2868 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002869
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002870- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
2871 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
2872 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002873
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002874- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
2875 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002876
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002877- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
2878 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
2879 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
2880 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
2881 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002882
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002883- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
2884 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
2885 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
2886
2887- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
2888 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
2889 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002890
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002891- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
2892 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
2893 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
2894 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002895 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002896
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002897- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
2898 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002899
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002900- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
2901 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002902
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002903- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00002904 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002905 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
2906 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002907
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002908
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002909What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002910===============================
2911
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002912*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
2913
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002914Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002915--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002916
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002917- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
2918 with a custom metaclass.
2919
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002920Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002921-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002922
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002923- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
2924 are proxies.
2925
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002926Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002927-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002928
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002929- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
2930 very short strings.
2931
2932- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
2933 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
2934 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
2935 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
2936 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
2937
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002938Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002939-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002940
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002941- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
2942 close or delete time).
2943
2944- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
2945 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
2946
2947- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
2948
2949- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002950 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002951
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002952Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002953-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002954
2955Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002956-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002957
2958C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002959-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002960
2961New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002962-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002963
2964Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002965-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002966
2967Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002968-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002969
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002970- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
2971
2972- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
2973 instances are deleted at process exit time.
2974
2975- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
2976 deleted at process exit time.
2977
2978- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
2979 in backslash.
2980
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002981Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002982----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002983
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002984- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
2985 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
2986 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
2987
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002988
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00002989What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002990===========================
2991
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002992*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
2993
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002994Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002995--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002996
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002997- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
2998 been extensively updated. See
2999
3000 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3001
3002 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3003
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003004- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3005 deleted!
3006
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003007- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3008 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3009 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3010 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3011 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3012
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003013- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3014
3015 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3016 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3017
3018 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3019 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3020 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3021 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3022 supported anyway.
3023
3024 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3025 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3026
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003027- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3028 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3029 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3030 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3031 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003032
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003033- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3034 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3035 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3036
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003037Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003038-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003039
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003040- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3041 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3042 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3043 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3044 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3045 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003046 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3047 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3048 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3049 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003050
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003051- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3052 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3053 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3054
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003055Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003056-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003057
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003058- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3059
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003060Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003061-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003062
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003063- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3064 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3065 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3066 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3067 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3068 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3069
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003070- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3071
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003072- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3073
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003074- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3075
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003076- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3077 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3078 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3079
3080- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3081
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003082Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003083-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003084
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003085- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3086 off a search on Google.
3087
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003088Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003089-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003090
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003091- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3092 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3093 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3094 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3095 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3096 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3097 other platforms should do likewise.
3098
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003099- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3100 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3101 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3102
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003103C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003104-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003105
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003106- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3107 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3108 producing key-value pairs.
3109
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003110- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003111 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003112 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3113 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3114 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3115 previously went unchallenged.
3116
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003117New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003118-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003119
3120Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003121-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003122
3123Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003124-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003125
3126Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003127----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003128
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00003129- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
3130 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003131
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003132- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
3133 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
3134 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
3135 home.
3136
3137
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003138What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003139===========================
3140
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003141*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
3142
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003143Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003144--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003145
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003146- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
3147 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003148
3149 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003150 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003151
3152 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
3153 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003154 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003155 This needs to be documented.
3156
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00003157- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
3158 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
3159
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00003160- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
3161 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
3162 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
3163
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00003164- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
3165 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
3166
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003167- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
3168 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
3169 class forbids it).
3170
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00003171- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
3172 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
3173 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
3174
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003175- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
3176
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003177Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003178-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003179
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003180- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
3181 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003182 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003183
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003184- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
3185 (like 1 + '').
3186
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003187Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003188-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003189
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003190- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
3191 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
3192 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
3193 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003194 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003195 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
3196
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00003197- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
3198 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
3199 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
3200 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
3201
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003202- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
3203 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003204 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
3205 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
3206 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003207
3208- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
3209 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003210
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00003211- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
3212 bytes on its input.
3213
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003214Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003215-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003216
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003217- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00003218 convenience function.
3219
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003220- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
3221 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
3222 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003223 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
3224 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
3225 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
3226 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
3227 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
3228 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003229
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00003230- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
3231 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
3232 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
3233 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
3234
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00003235- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
3236 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
3237 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
3238
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003239- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
3240 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
3241 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
3242 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
3243
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003244- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
3245 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003246 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003247 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
3248 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
3249 new -l and -e options.
3250
3251- statcache is now deprecated.
3252
3253- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
3254 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003255 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003256 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
3257 time properly taken into account.
3258
3259- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
3260 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
3261 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
3262 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
3263
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003264Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003265-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003266
3267Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003268-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003269
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003270- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
3271 is built with libdb3 if available.
3272
3273- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
3274
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003275C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003276-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003277
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00003278- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
3279 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
3280 PySequence_Size().
3281
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003282- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
3283
3284- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
3285 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
3286 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
3287
3288- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
3289 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
3290
3291- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
3292 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
3293
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003294New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003295-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003296
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003297- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
3298 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
3299
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00003300- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
3301 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
3302
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003303- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
3304
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003305Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003306-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003307
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003308- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
3309 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
3310
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003311Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003312-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003313
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003314Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003315----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003316
3317- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
3318 removed completely in the next release.
3319
3320- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
3321 OSX.
3322
3323- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
3324 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
3325
3326- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
3327
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003328
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003329What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003330===========================
3331
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003332*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
3333
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003334Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003335--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003336
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003337- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003338 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003339 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003340 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
3341 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003342 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
3343 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003344 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
3345 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00003346
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00003347- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
3348 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
3349
3350- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
3351 class methods, static methods, and properties.
3352
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003353Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003354-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003355
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00003356- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
3357 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
3358 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
3359 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
3360 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
3361 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
3362 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
3363 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
3364
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003365- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
3366 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
3367 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
3368 example).
3369
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003370- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003371 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003372 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003373 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003374
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003375- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
3376 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
3377 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00003378 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003379
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003380- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
3381 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
3382 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
3383 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
3384 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
3385 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
3386
3387 isinstance(x, (A, B))
3388
3389 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
3390
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003391Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003392-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003393
3394- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
3395
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003396- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
3397
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003398- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
3399 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00003400
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003401- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
3402 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
3403 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
3404 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
3405 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
3406 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00003407 attributes.
3408
3409- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
3410 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
3411 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00003412
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003413- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
3414 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
3415 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003416
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003417- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
3418 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
3419 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003420 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
3421 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
3422
3423- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
3424 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003425
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003426Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003427-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003428
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00003429- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
3430 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
3431
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003432- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
3433 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
3434 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
3435 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
3436
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00003437- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
3438 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
3439 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
3440 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
3441
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00003442 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
3443 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
3444 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
3445 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
3446 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
3447 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
3448 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
3449 without losing information).
3450
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003451- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003452 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
3453 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
3454 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
3455 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
3456 module).
3457
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003458 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003459 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
3460 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
3461 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
3462 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003463
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003464- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00003465 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
3466 encoding.
3467
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00003468- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
3469 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
3470
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003471- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003472 to allow saving the message body to a file.
3473
3474- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
3475 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
3476 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
3477 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
3478
3479- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
3480
3481- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
3482 ON, and OFF.
3483
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003484- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
3485 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
3486
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003487Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003488-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003489
3490- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
3491 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
3492 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003493
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003494- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
3495 been added: -X and -E.
3496
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003497Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003498-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003499
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003500- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
3501 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
3502
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003503C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003504-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003505
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00003506- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
3507 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
3508 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
3509 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
3510 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
3511
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00003512- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
3513 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
3514 as long) arguments.
3515
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003516- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
3517 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
3518 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
3519 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
3520 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
3521 report any bugs or strange behavior).
3522
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003523- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
3524 input.
3525
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003526New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003527-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003528
3529Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003530-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003531
3532Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003533-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003534
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00003535- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
3536 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
3537 is created for .py and .pyw files.
3538
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003539- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
3540 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
3541 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003542 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003543
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003544 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
3545 # (SIGINT) behavior.
3546 import signal
3547 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003548
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003549 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003550 while 1:
3551 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003552 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003553 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
3554 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
3555 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
3556 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003557
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003558
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003559What's New in Python 2.2a4?
3560===========================
3561
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003562*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
3563
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003564Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003565--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003566
3567- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
3568 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
3569 documentation for all operations on list objects.
3570
3571- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
3572 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
3573 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
3574 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
3575 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
3576 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
3577 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003578
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003579- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003580 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003581 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
3582 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
3583 associate a docstring with a property.
3584
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003585- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
3586 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
3587 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
3588 other built-in object types.
3589
3590- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
3591 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
3592 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
3593 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
3594 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
3595
3596- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
3597 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
3598
3599- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
3600 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003601 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003602 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
3603 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
3604 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
3605 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
3606 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
3607
3608- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
3609 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
3610 class.
3611
3612- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
3613 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
3614 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
3615 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
3616
3617- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
3618 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
3619 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
3620 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
3621
3622- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
3623 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
3624
3625- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
3626 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
3627 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
3628 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
3629 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003630 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003631 with the same value as s.
3632
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00003633- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
3634
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003635Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003636----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003637
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00003638- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
3639
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00003640- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
3641 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
3642 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
3643 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
3644 objects.
3645
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003646- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
3647 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00003648 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
3649 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
3650
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003651- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
3652 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
3653 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
3654
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003655Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003656-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003657
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00003658- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3659 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
3660 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
3661 by the instances.
3662
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00003663- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
3664 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
3665 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
3666
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003667- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
3668 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
3669 before the entire comparison is complete.
3670
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00003671- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3672 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
3673 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
3674
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00003675- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
3676 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
3677 getwriter().
3678
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003679- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
3680 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
3681
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00003682- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003683 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
3684 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
3685
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00003686- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
3687 iterable object.
3688
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003689- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
3690 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003691
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003692- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
3693 authentication.
3694
3695- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
3696 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003697
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003698- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00003699 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
3700 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
3701 a sample driver.)
3702
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003703Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003704-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003705
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003706- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
3707 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
3708 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
3709 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
3710 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
3711 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
3712 kernel has large file support.
3713
3714- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
3715 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
3716 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
3717 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
3718 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
3719
3720- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
3721 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
3722 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
3723
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003724C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003725-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003726
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003727- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
3728 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
3729
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003730New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003731-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003732
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003733- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
3734 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
3735
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003736Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003737-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003738
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003739- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
3740 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
3741 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
3742 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
3743 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
3744
3745- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
3746 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
3747 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
3748 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
3749
3750- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
3751 especially in regard to reporting errors.
3752
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003753Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003754-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003755
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003756- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003757 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
3758 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003759
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003760
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003761What's New in Python 2.2a3?
3762===========================
3763
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003764*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
3765
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003766Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003767----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003768
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003769- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
3770 big to represent as a C double.
3771
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00003772- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
3773 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
3774 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
3775 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
3776 restriction).
3777
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00003778- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
3779 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
3780 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
3781 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
3782 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
3783
3784 >>> dir([])
3785 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
3786 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
3787 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
3788 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
3789 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
3790 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
3791 'reverse', 'sort']
3792
3793 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
3794
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003795- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003796 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
3797 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
3798 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
3799 OverflowError exception.
3800
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00003801- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003802 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003803 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
3804 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
3805 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
3806 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
3807 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003808 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003809 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
3810 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
3811
3812 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
3813 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
3814 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
3815 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003816
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003817- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003818 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
3819 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
3820 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
3821 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
3822 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
3823 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
3824 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
3825 once it is created.
3826
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00003827- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
3828 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
3829 (key, value) pairs.
3830
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003831- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003832 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
3833 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
3834
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00003835- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
3836 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
3837 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
3838 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
3839 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003840
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003841- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003842 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
3843 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
3844
3845 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
3846
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003847- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00003848 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
3849
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003850Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003851-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003852
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003853- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00003854 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
3855 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003856
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00003857- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
3858 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
3859 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
3860 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
3861 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
3862 in this area anymore).
3863
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00003864- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
3865 threading.Timer.
3866
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00003867- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
3868 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
3869
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003870- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003871 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
3872
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003873- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00003874 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
3875 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
3876 converted to Python longs.
3877
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003878- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003879 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
3880
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00003881- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
3882 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
3883 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
3884
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003885Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003886-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003887
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003888- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
3889 division operators as per PEP 238.
3890
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003891Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003892-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003893
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003894- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
3895 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
3896 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
3897 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
3898
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003899C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003900-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003901
3902- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003903
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003904- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
3905 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003906 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003907
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003908 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
3909 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003910 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003911 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003912
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003913- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003914 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
3915 module:
3916
3917 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003918
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003919 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
3920 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003921
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003922 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
3923 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003924
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003925 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
3926
3927 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
3928
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003929- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003930 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
3931 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
3932 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003933
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003934New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003935-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003936
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00003937- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
3938 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
3939 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
3940 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
3941 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003942
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003943Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003944-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003945
3946Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003947-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003948
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003949- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
3950 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
3951 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
3952 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00003953 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
3954 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
3955 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
3956 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
3957 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003958
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003959- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00003960 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
3961
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003962
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003963What's New in Python 2.2a2?
3964===========================
3965
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003966*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
3967
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003968Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003969-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003970
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00003971- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
3972 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
3973
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003974- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
3975 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
3976 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003977
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00003978- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
3979 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
3980 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
3981 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003982
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003983- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
3984
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003985- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003986
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003987Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003988-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003989
3990- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00003991 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003992 the module docstring for details.
3993
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003994Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003995-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003996
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003997- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003998 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
3999 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4000 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004001
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004002- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4003 Nick Mathewson.
4004
4005Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004006----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004007
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004008- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4009 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4010 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4011 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4012 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4013 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4014 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4015 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4016
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004017- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4018 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4019 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4020 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4021
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004022- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4023 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4024 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4025 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4026 come a long way).
4027
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004028- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4029 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4030 write filters for these warnings).
4031
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004032- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4033 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4034 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4035 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4036 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4037
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004038- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4039 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4040 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4041 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4042 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4043 older distribution.
4044
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004045Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004046-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004047
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004048- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4049 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004050 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004051
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004052- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4053 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4054 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4055
4056- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4057
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004058- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4059
4060- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4061
4062- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4063
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004064- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004065
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004066- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4067
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004068New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004069-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004070
4071C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004072-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004073
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004074- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4075 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4076 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4077 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4078 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4079 against buffer overruns.
4080
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004081- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004082 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4083 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004084 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4085 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4086 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4087
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004088- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4089 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4090 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4091 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4092 deprecated.
4093
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004094Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004095-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004096
4097- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4098 relevant is found.
4099
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004100
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004101What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004102===========================
4103
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004104*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4105
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004106Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004107----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004108
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004109- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4110 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4111 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4112 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4113 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4114 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4115 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4116 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004117 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004118 repaired.
4119
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004120- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00004121 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004122 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
4123 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
4124 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
4125 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
4126 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
4127 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
4128 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
4129 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
4130
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00004131- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
4132 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
4133 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
4134 leading BMO character).
4135
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004136- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
4137 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
4138 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
4139
4140 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
4141 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
4142 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004143
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004144 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
4145 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
4146 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
4147 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
4148 for various simple to use conversions.
4149
4150 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
4151 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
4152
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004153 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4154 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
4155 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
4156 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
4157 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4158 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
4159 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4160 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
4161 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4162 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
4163 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4164 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
4165 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4166 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
4167 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004168
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004169- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
4170 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
4171 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004172 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004173 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004174
4175 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004176 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
4177 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
4178 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
4179 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
4180 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004181 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
4182 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004183
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004184 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
4185 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
4186 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004187 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004188
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00004189- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
4190 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
4191 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
4192 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
4193 floating arithmetic,
4194
4195 x = 9007199254740992.0
4196 print long(x)
4197
4198 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
4199 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
4200 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
4201 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
4202 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
4203 functions are of good quality).
4204
4205 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
4206 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
4207 algorithms to break.
4208
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00004209- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
4210 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
4211 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
4212 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
4213 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
4214 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
4215 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
4216 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
4217 order.
4218
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004219- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
4220 operation along the most common code paths.
4221
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004222- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
4223 the same as dict.has_key(x).
4224
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00004225- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
4226 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
4227 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
4228 {}.update(UserDict())
4229
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004230- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
4231 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
4232 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
4233 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
4234 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
4235 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
4236 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
4237 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
4238
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004239- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004240 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004241
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004242 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00004243 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
4244 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00004245 join() method of strings
4246 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004247 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
4248 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004249 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00004250 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004251
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00004252- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
4253 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
4254
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004255- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
4256 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
4257
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00004258- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
4259 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
4260 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
4261 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
4262
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004263- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
4264 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004265 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004266 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
4267 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00004268
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00004269- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
4270
4271
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004272Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004273-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004274
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004275- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004276 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004277 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
4278 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
4279
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00004280- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
4281 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
4282
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00004283- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
4284 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
4285 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
4286 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
4287
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00004288- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
4289 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
4290 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
4291
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00004292- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
4293
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00004294- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
4295
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00004296- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
4297 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
4298 that are still imported into string.py).
4299
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004300- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
4301
4302- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
4303 Now it does.
4304
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004305- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
4306
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004307- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
4308 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
4309 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
4310 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
4311 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004312 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
4313 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004314
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00004315- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
4316 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
4317 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
4318 'help(object)'.
4319
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004320Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004321-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004322
4323- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004324 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004325 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
4326 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
4327
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004328- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004329 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
4330 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004331
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004332C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004333-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004334
4335- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
4336 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004337
4338----
4339
4340**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**