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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
8=================================
9
10*Release date: XX-XXX-2004*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +000015- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
16
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +000017- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
18 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
19
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +000020- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
21 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
22 modified the list.
23
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +000024- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
25 functions is now writable.
26
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +000027- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
28 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
29 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
30 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
31
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +000032- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
33 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
34 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
35 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
36 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +000037
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +000038- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
39 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
40
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +000041Extension modules
42-----------------
43
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +000044- Added socket.socketpair().
45
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +000046Library
47-------
48
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +000049- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
50
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +000051- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
52
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +000053- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
54 Percivall.
55
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +000056- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
57 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
58
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +000059- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
60 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
61 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
62 than creating a new one.
63
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +000064- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
65 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
66 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
67 and exponent.
68
69- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
70
71- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
72 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
73 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
74
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +000075- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
76 to the readline module.
77
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +000078- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +000079 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
80 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +000081
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +000082- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
83 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
84 contains symlinks.
85
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +000086- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
87 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
88
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +000089- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
90 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
91 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
92
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +000093- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
94 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
95 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
96 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
97 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
98 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
99 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
100 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
101 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
102 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
103 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
104 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
105 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
106
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000107- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
108
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000109Tools/Demos
110-----------
111
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000112- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
113 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
114
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000115- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
116
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000117Build
118-----
119
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000120- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
121 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
122
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000123- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
124 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
125
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000126- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
127 GNU/k*BSD systems.
128
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000129- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
130 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
131
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000132C API
133-----
134
135Documentation
136-------------
137
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000138- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if it contains
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000139symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment since 1992, but is now in
140the library reference as well.
141
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000142New platforms
143-------------
144
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000145- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
146
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000147Tests
148-----
149
150Windows
151-------
152
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000153- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
154 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
155 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
156 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
157 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
158 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
159 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
160 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
161 the problem.
162
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000163Mac
164---
165
166
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000167What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
168=================================
169
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000170*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000171
172Core and builtins
173-----------------
174
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000175- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
176 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
177 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
178 sensitive code.
179
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000180- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
181 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so:
182 @staticmethod
183 def foo(bar):
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000184 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000185
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000186- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
187 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
188 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
189 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
190 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
191 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
192 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
193 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
194 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
195 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
196 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
197
198 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
199 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
200 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
201 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
202 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
203 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
204 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
205
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000206- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
207 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
208
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000209- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000210 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000211
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000212- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000213 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000214 which was missing for no apparent reason.
215
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000216- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000217 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
218 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
219
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000220- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
221 types that support garbage collection.
222
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000223- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
224
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000225- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
226 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
227 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
228 Jython.
229
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000230- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
231
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000232- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
233 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
234
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000235- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
236 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
237 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000238
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000239- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
240 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
241 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
242
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000243Extension modules
244-----------------
245
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000246- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
247
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000248Library
249-------
250
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000251- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
252 TIS-620
253
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000254- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
255 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
256 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
257 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
258 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
259 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
260 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
261 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
262 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
263 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
264
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000265- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
266
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000267- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
268 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
269 same as when the argument is omitted).
270 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
271
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000272- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
273
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000274- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
275 schemes are offered.
276
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000277- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
278
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000279- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
280 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
281 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
282
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000283- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
284
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000285- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
286 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
287
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000288- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
289 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
290 when dummy_threading is being used.
291
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000292- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
293 from a tarfile.
294
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000295- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000296 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000297
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000298- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
299 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
300 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
301 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
302
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000303- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
304 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
305
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000306- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
307 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
308 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
309 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
310 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
311 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
312 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
313 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
314 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
315 by some other method in progress).
316
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000317- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
318 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
319 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000320
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000321- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
322
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000323- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
324 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
325 AM Kuchling.
326
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000327- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
328 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
329 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
330
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000331- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
332 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
333 instead of unsigned.
334
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000335- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000336 no longer part of the public API.
337
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000338- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
339 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
340 string methods of the same name).
341
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000342- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000343 SF patch 945642.
344
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000345- doctest unittest integration improvements:
346
347 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
348
349 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
350 DocTestSuites.
351
352- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
353 that provide thread-local data.
354
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000355- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
356 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
357
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000358- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
359
360- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
361 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
362 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
363
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000364- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
365
366 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
367 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
368 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000369
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000370 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
371 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
372 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
373 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
374
375 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
376 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
377
378 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
379 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
380 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
381 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
382
383 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
384 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
385 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
386 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
387 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
388
389 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
390 wrapping help output.
391
392 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
393 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
394 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000395
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000396C API
397-----
398
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000399- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
400 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
401 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
402 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
403 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
404 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
405 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
406 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
407 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
408 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
409 its visible semantics have not changed.
410
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000411- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
412 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
413
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000414Documentation
415-------------
416
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000417- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000418
419 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000420 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000421
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000422 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000423
424 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
425
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000426- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000427
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000428Tests
429-----
430
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000431- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000432 platforms that use the Makefile.
433
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000434- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
435 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
436 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
437
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000438
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000439What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
440=================================
441
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000442*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000443
444Core and builtins
445-----------------
446
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000447- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
448 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
449 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
450 objects now (one object instead of three).
451
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000452- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
453 Windows DLLs.
454
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000455- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
456 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000457
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000458- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
459 a new .pyc magic.
460
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000461- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
462 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
463 be there.
464
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000465- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
466 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
467 the LC_NUMERIC category.
468
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000469- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
470 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
471 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
472
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000473- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
474
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000475- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
476 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
477 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000478
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000479- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
480 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
481
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000482- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
483
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000484- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000485 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000486
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000487- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
488
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000489- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
490
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000491- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
492 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
493
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000494- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
495 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
496 Fixes bug #858016 .
497
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000498- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
499 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
500 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
501
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000502- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
503 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
504 improves their performance (about 35%).
505
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000506- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
507 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
508 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
509
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000510- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
511 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
512 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
513 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
514
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000515- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
516 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
517 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
518 length is not known).
519
520- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
521 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000522 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
523 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000524 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
525
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000526- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
527 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
528
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000529- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
530 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
531 keyword arguments.
532
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000533- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
534 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
535 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
536
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +0000537- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
538 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
539 cases.
540
541- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
542 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
543 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
544 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
545 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
546 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
547 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
548 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
549 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
550 a release build.
551
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000552- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
553 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
554
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000555- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000556 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000557
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000558- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
559 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
560 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
561 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
562 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
563 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
564 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
565 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
566 destroyed.
567
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000568- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
569 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
570 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
571 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
572 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
573 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
574 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
575 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
576
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000577- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
578 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
579 character other than a space.
580
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000581- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
582 by the function object or by the method object, the function
583 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
584 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
585 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
586 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
587 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
588 attributes with the same name.
589
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000590- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
591 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
592 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
593 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
594 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
595 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
596 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
597 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
598 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
599 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
600 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
601 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
602 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
603 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000604
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000605- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
606 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
607 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
608 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
609 This has been repaired.
610
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000611- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
612
613- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
614
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000615- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
616 over a sequence.
617
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000618- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000619 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000620
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000621- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
622
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000623- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
624 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
625 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
626 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
627 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
628 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
629 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
630 records with equal keys is unchanged).
631
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000632- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
633 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
634 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
635
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000636- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
637 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
638 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
639 freelist.
640
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000641- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
642 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
643
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000644- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
645 number.
646
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000647- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
648 a TypeError exception.
649
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000650- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
651 820195.
652
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000653- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
654 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
655 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
656
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000657- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000658 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
659 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +0000660
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +0000661- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
662 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
663 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
664
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000665- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
666 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000667 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000668
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000669- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +0000670 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
671 the first call.
672
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000673
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000674Extension modules
675-----------------
676
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +0000677- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
678 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
679
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000680- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
681 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
682 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
683 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
684 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
685 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
686 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +0000687
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +0000688- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
689
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +0000690- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
691
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +0000692- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
693 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
694
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +0000695- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
696 fewer false positives.
697
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +0000698- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
699 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
700
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000701- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +0000702 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
703
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +0000704- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000705 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +0000706 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
707 Also, array.extend() now accepts any iterable argument for repeated
708 appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +0000709
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +0000710- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
711 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
712 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
713 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
714
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +0000715- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
716 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
717 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
718 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
719 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
720 #897625.
721
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +0000722- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
723 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
724
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +0000725- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
726 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
727 and pops on either side of the deque.
728
729- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
730 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
731
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +0000732- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
733 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
734 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
735 other functions that expect a function argument.
736
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +0000737- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
738
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000739- os.getsid was added.
740
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +0000741- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
742 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
743 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
744
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +0000745- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
746
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +0000747- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
748
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +0000749- readline.clear_history was added.
750
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +0000751- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
752
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +0000753- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
754
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +0000755- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
756
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +0000757- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
758
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +0000759- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
760
761- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
762
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +0000763- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
764
765- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
766
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000767- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
768 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
769 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
770
771- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
772 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
773 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
774 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
775 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
776 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
777 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
778
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +0000779- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
780 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
781 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
782 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000783
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000784- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000785 iterators from a single iterable.
786
787- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
788 of raising a TypeError exception.
789
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +0000790- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
791 as parameter.
792
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000793Library
794-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000795
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +0000796- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
797 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
798 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000799
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +0000800- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
801 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
802 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +0000803
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +0000804- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +0000805
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +0000806- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
807 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +0000808
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +0000809- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
810 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
811
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000812- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
813
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000814- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000815 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000816
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000817- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
818 that generate a *-debuginfo.rpm.
819
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +0000820- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
821
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +0000822- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
823 on cygwin and mingw32.
824
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +0000825- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
826
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +0000827- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
828 module.
829
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +0000830- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
831 installation scheme for all platforms.
832
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +0000833- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +0000834 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +0000835
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000836- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
837 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
838 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
839
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +0000840- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
841 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
842 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
843
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +0000844- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
845
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +0000846- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
847
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +0000848- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
849 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
850
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +0000851- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
852 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
853 type pattern with the same value exists.
854
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +0000855- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
856 when run from the command prompt).
857
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000858- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
859 not taken into consideration when caching value.
860
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +0000861- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
862 default sort).
863
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +0000864- Added global runctx function to profile module
865
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +0000866- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
867
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +0000868- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
869
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +0000870- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
871
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000872- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +0000873 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
874 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
875 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
876 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
877 accordingly.
878
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +0000879- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
880 decoding standards.
881
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +0000882- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
883 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
884 called for all requests.
885
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +0000886- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
887 they are passed to the compiler.
888
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +0000889- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
890 indent, width and depth.
891
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +0000892- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
893 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
894
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +0000895- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
896 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
897
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +0000898- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
899
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +0000900- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
901
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000902- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
903
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +0000904- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
905 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
906
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +0000907- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +0000908 for better performance.
909
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000910- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +0000911
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +0000912- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
913 a string).
914
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +0000915- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
916
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +0000917- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
918
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +0000919- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
920
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +0000921- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
922
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +0000923- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
924 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
925 list of fieldnames.
926
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +0000927- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
928 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
929
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +0000930- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
931
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +0000932- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
933 empty lists.
934
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +0000935- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
936 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
937 and shelves.
938
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +0000939- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
940 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
941
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000942- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +0000943 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
944 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000945
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +0000946- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
947 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +0000948 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +0000949
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000950- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +0000951 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
952 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
953
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000954- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
955 and removed in Py2.4.
956
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +0000957- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
958
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +0000959- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
960
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000961Tools/Demos
962-----------
963
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +0000964- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
965 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
966
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +0000967- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
968
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +0000969- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
970 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
971 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
972 destination in situations where both files are given.
973
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +0000974- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
975 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
976 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
977 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
978
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +0000979- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
980
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +0000981- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
982 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
983 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
984 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
985 now.
986
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000987- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
988 in effect
989
990- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
991 C-c C-h
992
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +0000993- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
994 -d option was given.
995
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000996Build
997-----
998
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +0000999- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1000 build under OS X.
1001
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001002- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1003 --enable-profiling.
1004
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001005- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1006 is configured --with-tsc.
1007
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001008- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1009 on AMD64.
1010
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001011- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1012 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1013
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001014- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1015 removed.
1016
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001017- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1018 supported (see PEP 11).
1019
1020- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1021
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001022- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1023
1024- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1025 (see PEP 11).
1026
1027- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1028 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1029
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001030C API
1031-----
1032
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001033- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1034 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1035 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1036
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001037- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1038 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1039 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1040 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1041
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001042- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1043 generator objects.
1044
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001045- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1046 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001047 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1048 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001049
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001050- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1051 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1052
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001053- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1054 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1055 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1056 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1057 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1058
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001059- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1060 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1061 about 10% faster.
1062
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001063- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1064 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1065
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001066- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1067 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1068 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1069 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1070
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001071Windows
1072-------
1073
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001074- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1075 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1076 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1077 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1078
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001079- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1080 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1081 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1082
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001083
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001084What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1085===============================
1086
1087*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1088
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001089IDLE
1090----
1091
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001092- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1093 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1094 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1095 context-menu actions.
1096
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001097- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1098 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1099 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1100 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1101 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1102 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1103 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1104 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1105 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1106
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001107
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001108What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1109=============================================
1110
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001111*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001112
1113Core and builtins
1114-----------------
1115
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001116- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001117 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001118 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1119
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001120Extension modules
1121-----------------
1122
1123- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1124 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1125 than once. This has been fixed.
1126
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001127- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1128 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1129 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1130 call.
1131
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001132- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1133
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001134Library
1135-------
1136
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001137- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1138 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1139
1140- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1141 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1142 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1143 restored.
1144
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001145IDLE
1146----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001147
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001148- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001149
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001150Build
1151-----
1152
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001153- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1154 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1155
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001156C API
1157-----
1158
1159Windows
1160-------
1161
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001162- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1163 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1164
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001165- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1166
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001167Mac
1168---
1169
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001170- Various fixes to pimp.
1171
1172- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1173
1174- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1175 more problems than it solves.
1176
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001177
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001178What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1179=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001180
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001181*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1182
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001183Core and builtins
1184-----------------
1185
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001186- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1187 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1188
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001189- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1190 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001191 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001192
1193- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1194 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1195 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001196 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001197
1198- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1199 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001200
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001201- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1202 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1203 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1204
1205- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001206 770247.
1207
1208- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001209
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001210Extension modules
1211-----------------
1212
1213- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1214 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1215
1216- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1217
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001218- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1219
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001220- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1221 contained within the _strptime module.
1222
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001223- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1224 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1225
1226- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001227 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1228
1229- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1230 the find_class attribute, if present.
1231
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001232- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001233
1234 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1235 (SF bug 763298).
1236
1237 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001238 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1239 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1240 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001241
1242 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1243
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001244Library
1245-------
1246
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001247- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1248
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001249- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1250 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1251 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1252 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1253 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1254 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1255 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1256 or Tester().
1257
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001258- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1259 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1260 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1261 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1262 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1263 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1264 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1265 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1266 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001267
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001268 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001269
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001270- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1271 weren't before was an oversight.
1272
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001273- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1274 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1275
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001276- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1277 when there are no lines.
1278
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001279- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1280 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1281
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001282- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1283 to child processes.
1284
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001285- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1286
1287- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1288
1289- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1290 xmlrpclib.
1291
1292- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1293 responses.
1294
1295- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1296 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1297
1298- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1299 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1300 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1301
1302- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1303 used as patterns.
1304
1305- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1306 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1307 than Tk 8.3.
1308
1309- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1310
1311- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001312
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001313Tools/Demos
1314-----------
1315
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001316- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1317
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001318- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1319
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001320- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001321
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001322Build
1323-----
1324
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001325- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1326
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001327- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1328
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001329- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1330 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001331
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001332- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1333 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1334 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001335
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001336C API
1337-----
1338
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001339- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1340 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1341
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001342Windows
1343-------
1344
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001345- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1346 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1347 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1348 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1349 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1350 Python exception ::
1351
1352 thread.error: can't start new thread
1353
1354 is raised now.
1355
1356- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1357 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1358 instead of from DLL teardown.
1359
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001360Mac
1361---
1362
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001363- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001364 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001365 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1366 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1367 the executable in the bundle.
1368
1369- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001370
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001371- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1372
1373- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1374 on Panther.
1375
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001376What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1377================================
1378
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001379*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001380
1381Core and builtins
1382-----------------
1383
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001384- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1385 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1386 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1387 with the -i option.
1388
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001389- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1390 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1391
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001392- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1393 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1394
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001395- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1396 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1397 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1398 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1399 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1400 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1401 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1402 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1403 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1404 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1405 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1406 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1407 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001408
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001409- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1410 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1411 embedded in a lambda expression.
1412
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001413- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1414 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1415 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1416 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1417 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1418
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001419- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1420 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1421 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1422
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001423- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1424 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1425
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001426- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1427 It's writable again.
1428
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001429- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1430 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1431 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001432 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001433
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001434- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1435 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1436 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1437
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001438Extension modules
1439-----------------
1440
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001441- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1442 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1443
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001444- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1445 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1446 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1447 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1448
1449- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1450 collection.
1451
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001452- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1453 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1454 unique within a single program run.
1455
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001456- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1457 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1458
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001459- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1460 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1461
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001462- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1463 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001464
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001465- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1466
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001467- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1468 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1469
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001470- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1471 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1472 for many BSD-derived systems.
1473
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001474
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001475Library
1476-------
1477
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001478- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1479 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1480 primary ones:
1481
1482 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1483 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1484 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1485
1486 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1487 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1488 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1489 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1490 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1491 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1492
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001493- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1494 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1495 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1496 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1497 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1498 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1499 argument.
1500
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001501- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1502 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1503 in the archive.
1504
1505- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1506 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1507
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001508- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1509 569574).
1510
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001511- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1512 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1513 no more.
1514
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001515- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1516 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1517 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1518 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1519 code coverage.
1520
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001521- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1522 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1523 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001524 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1525 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001526
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001527- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1528 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1529 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001530 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001531
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001532- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1533
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001534- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1535 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1536 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1537 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1538
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001539- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1540 handling.
1541
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001542- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1543 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1544
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001545- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1546 in socket.py.
1547
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001548- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1549
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001550- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1551 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1552 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1553 opener with proxy support.
1554
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001555- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1556
1557- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1558
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001559Tools/Demos
1560-----------
1561
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001562- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1563
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001564- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1565
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001566- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1567 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001568
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001569- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1570 files.
1571
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001572Build
1573-----
1574
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001575- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001576 different root directory.
1577
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001578C API
1579-----
1580
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001581- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1582 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1583 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1584 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1585 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1586 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1587 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1588 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1589 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1590 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1591
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001592- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1593 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1594 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1595 from Python.
1596
1597
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001598New platforms
1599-------------
1600
1601None this time.
1602
1603Tests
1604-----
1605
1606- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1607 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1608
1609Windows
1610-------
1611
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001612- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1613
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001614- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1615 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1616 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1617 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1618 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1619 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1620 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1621 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1622 that's what it's for.
1623
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001624Mac
1625---
1626
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001627- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1628 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1629 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1630 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001631- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1632 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1633- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001634
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001635SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1636------------------------------------
1637
1638430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1639598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1640622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1641661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1642683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1643697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1644713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1645724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1646727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1647729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1648730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1649731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1650732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1651733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1652735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1653740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1654744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1655745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1656747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1657749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1658751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
1659753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
1660755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
1661757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
1662760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
1663
1664
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001665What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
1666================================
1667
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00001668*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001669
1670Core and builtins
1671-----------------
1672
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00001673- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
1674 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
1675
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00001676- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
1677 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
1678 and cannot be strings).
1679
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00001680- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
1681 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
1682 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
1683 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
1684
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00001685- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
1686 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
1687 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
1688 Python itself.
1689
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00001690- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
1691 the referenced object, if it has one.
1692
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00001693- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
1694 the thread started at
1695 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
1696
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00001697- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
1698 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
1699 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
1700 placed on a list index.
1701
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00001702- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
1703 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
1704 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
1705 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
1706
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001707- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
1708 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
1709 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
1710 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
1711 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
1712 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
1713 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
1714
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00001715- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
1716 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
1717 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
1718 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
1719 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
1720
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00001721- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
1722 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00001723
1724- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
1725 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
1726 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
1727 #693195.)
1728
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00001729- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
1730 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001731
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001732- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00001733 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001734 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
1735 interpreter executions, would fail.
1736
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001737- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00001738 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00001739 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001740
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001741Extension modules
1742-----------------
1743
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00001744- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
1745 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
1746 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
1747 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
1748
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00001749- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
1750 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
1751
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00001752- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
1753 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
1754 and Greg Chapman.)
1755
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001756- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
1757 recursively.
1758
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00001759- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00001760 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
1761 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
1762 leaks.
1763
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00001764- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
1765
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00001766- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
1767 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
1768 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
1769 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
1770 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
1771 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
1772 #705836.
1773
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001774- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00001775 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
1776
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00001777- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
1778 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
1779 See SF bug #692416.
1780
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00001781- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
1782 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
1783
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00001784- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
1785 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
1786 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001787
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001788- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00001789 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
1790 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
1791
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00001792- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
1793 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
1794 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
1795 timeouts to work properly.
1796
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001797Library
1798-------
1799
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001800- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
1801 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
1802 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
1803 future release.
1804
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00001805- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
1806 for querying platform dependent features.
1807
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00001808- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00001809
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00001810- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
1811 pickle protocol versions.
1812
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00001813- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
1814 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
1815 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
1816
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00001817- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
1818
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00001819- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
1820 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
1821 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
1822 modules.
1823
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00001824- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
1825 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
1826 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
1827
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001828- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
1829 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
1830
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00001831- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
1832 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
1833 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
1834
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001835- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00001836 MS Office extensions.
1837
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00001838- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
1839 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
1840
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00001841- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
1842 execution speed of expressions and statements.
1843
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001844- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
1845 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
1846 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
1847 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
1848 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
1849 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
1850
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001851- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
1852 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
1853 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001854
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00001855- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
1856 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
1857 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
1858
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00001859- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
1860
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00001861- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
1862 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
1863 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
1864
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001865Tools/Demos
1866-----------
1867
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00001868- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
1869 See the module docstring for details.
1870
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001871Build
1872-----
1873
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00001874- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
1875 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001876
1877C API
1878-----
1879
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001880- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
1881
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00001882- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
1883 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
1884 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
1885
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001886- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
1887 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001888
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001889 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
1890 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
1891 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00001892
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00001893- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00001894 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
1895
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00001896- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
1897 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
1898 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001899
1900New platforms
1901-------------
1902
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001903None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001904
1905Tests
1906-----
1907
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00001908- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
1909 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001910
1911Windows
1912-------
1913
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00001914- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
1915 function.
1916
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00001917- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
1918 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001919
1920Mac
1921---
1922
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001923- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
1924 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00001925
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00001926- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
1927 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001928
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00001929- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
1930 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
1931 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001932
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001933- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00001934 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
1935 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001936
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001937- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
1938 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001939
1940
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001941What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
1942=================================
1943
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001944*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001945
1946Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001947-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001948
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00001949- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
1950 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
1951 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
1952
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00001953- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
1954 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
1955 (SF patch #664376.)
1956
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001957- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
1958 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
1959 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
1960 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
1961 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
1962 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00001963 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001964
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001965- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
1966 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
1967 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
1968 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001969 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001970
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00001971- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
1972 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
1973 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
1974 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
1975 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
1976 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
1977 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
1978 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
1979 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
1980 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
1981 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
1982
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00001983- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
1984 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
1985 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
1986 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
1987 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
1988 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
1989
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00001990- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
1991 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
1992
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00001993- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
1994 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
1995 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
1996 case.)
1997
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00001998- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
1999 passed as unicode strings.
2000
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002001- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2002 See SF bug #683467.
2003
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002004- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2005 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2006
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002007- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2008
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002009- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2010
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002011- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2012 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2013 arguments.
2014
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002015- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2016 See SF bug #667147.
2017
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002018- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002019 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002020 See SF bug #676155.
2021
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002022- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002023 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002024 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2025 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2026 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2027 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2028 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2029 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002030
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002031Extension modules
2032-----------------
2033
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002034- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2035 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2036 tp_as_number pointer.
2037
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002038- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2039 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2040 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2041 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2042 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2043
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002044- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2045
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002046- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2047
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002048- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002049 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002050 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2051 patch #678531.)
2052
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002053- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2054 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2055
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002056- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2057 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2058
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002059- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2060
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002061- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2062 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2063 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2064
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002065- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2066
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002067- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2068 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2069
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002070- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002071
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002072- datetime changes:
2073
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002074 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2075
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002076 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2077 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2078 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2079 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2080 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2081 now.
2082
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002083 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002084 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2085 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002086
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002087 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002088 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002089 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2090 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2091 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2092 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002093
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002094 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2095 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2096 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002097 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2098
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002099 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2100 by a later example coded by Guido.
2101
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002102 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002103 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2104 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2105 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002106 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2107 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2108
2109 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2110 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2111 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2112 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2113 tzinfo subclass instance.
2114
2115 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2116 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2117 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2118 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2119 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2120 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2121 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2122 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002123
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002124 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2125 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2126 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2127 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2128 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002129 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2130
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002131 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002132
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002133 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2134 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2135 as a naive datetime object.
2136
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002137 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2138 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2139 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2140
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002141 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2142 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2143 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2144 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2145 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2146 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2147 comparison.
2148
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002149 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2150 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2151 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2152 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002153 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002154
2155 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002156
2157 and ::
2158
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002159 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2160
2161 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2162 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2163 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2164 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2165
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002166 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2167 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2168 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2169 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2170 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2171
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002172 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2173 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002174 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2175 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002176
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002177Library
2178-------
2179
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002180- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2181 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2182
2183- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2184 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2185 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2186 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2187 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2188 See PEP 307 for details.
2189
2190- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2191 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2192
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002193- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2194 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002195 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002196 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2197 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002198 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002199
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002200- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2201 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2202
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002203- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2204 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2205 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2206
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002207- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2208
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002209- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2210 exception.
2211
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002212- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2213 class.
2214
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002215- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2216 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2217 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2218
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002219- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2220 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2221
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002222- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002223 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2224 See SF bug #659228.
2225
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002226- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2227 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2228 See SF patch #651082.
2229
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002230- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002231
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002232- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2233 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2234
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002235- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002236 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002237
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002238- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2239 DOS paths from other platforms.
2240
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002241Tools/Demos
2242-----------
2243
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002244- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2245 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2246 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2247 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2248 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2249 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2250 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2251 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2252 example:
2253
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002254 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2255 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002256
2257 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2258
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002259
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002260Build
2261-----
2262
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002263- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2264 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2265 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002266 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2267
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002268 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2269
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002270- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2271 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2272 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2273 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2274 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2275 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2276 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2277 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2278 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2279
2280- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2281 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2282 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2283 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2284
2285- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2286 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2287
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002288C API
2289-----
2290
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002291- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2292 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002293
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002294- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2295 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2296 tp_as_number pointer.
2297
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002298- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2299 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2300 (SF #681367)
2301
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002302- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2303 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2304 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2305 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002306
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002307Tests
2308-----
2309
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002310- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002311 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2312 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2313 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2314 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2315 pydoc.)
2316
2317- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2318
2319- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002320
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002321Windows
2322-------
2323
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002324- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2325 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2326 time).
2327
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002328- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2329 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2330
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002331- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2332 release without strong cryptography.
2333
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002334- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002335 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002336
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002337- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2338 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2339
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002340Mac
2341---
2342
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002343- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2344 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002345
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002346- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2347 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2348 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002349
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002350- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2351 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002352
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002353- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2354 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2355 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2356 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002357
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002358- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002359 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2360 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2361 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002362
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002363
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002364What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002365=================================
2366
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002367*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002368
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002369Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002370--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002371
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002372- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2373
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002374- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2375 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002376 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002377 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002378 a different meaning than before.
2379
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002380- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002381 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002382 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002383
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002384- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002385 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002386 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002387
2388- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2389 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2390 and deallocation.
2391
2392- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2393 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2394
2395- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2396 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2397 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2398 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2399 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2400
2401- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2402 now detected by the garbage collector.
2403
2404- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2405 [SF bug 519621]
2406
2407- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2408 identifier.
2409
2410- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2411 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2412 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2413 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2414 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2415 [SF bug 563060]
2416
2417- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2418 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2419 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2420 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2421 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2422
2423- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2424 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2425 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2426
2427- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2428
2429- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2430 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2431 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2432 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2433 state of the slots would be lost.)
2434
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002435Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002436-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002437
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002438- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002439 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2440 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2441 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2442 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002443 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2444 Jython 2.1.
2445
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002446- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002447 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002448 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2449 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2450 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2451 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2452 these, see PEP 302.
2453
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002454- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2455 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2456 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2457
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002458- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2459 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2460 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2461
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002462- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2463 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2464 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2465
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002466- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2467 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2468 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2469 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2470 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2471 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2472 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2473 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2474 releases or implementations.
2475
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002476- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002477 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2478 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002479
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002480- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2481 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2482
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002483- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2484 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2485 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2486
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002487- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2488 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2489
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002490- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2491 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002492 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2493 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002494
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002495- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2496 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2497 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2498 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2499 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2500
2501 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2502 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2503 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2504 pattern.
2505
2506 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2507 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2508 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2509 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2510
2511 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2512 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2513 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2514 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2515 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2516 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2517
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002518- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2519 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2520 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2521 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2522 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2523 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2524 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2525 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002526
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002527- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2528 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2529 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2530 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2531 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002532 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2533 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2534 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2535 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2536 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2537 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2538 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002539
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002540- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2541 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2542
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002543- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2544 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2545 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2546 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2547 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2548 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2549 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2550 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2551 to Zack Weinberg!
2552
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002553- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2554 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2555 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2556 type. This has been fixed now.
2557
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002558- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2559 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2560 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2561
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002562- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2563 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2564 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2565 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2566 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2567 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2568 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2569 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002570 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002571
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002572- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2573 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2574 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002575
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002576- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2577 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2578 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2579 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2580 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2581 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2582 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2583 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002584 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002585 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2586 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2587
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002588- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2589 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2590 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2591 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2592 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2593 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2594 this.)
2595
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002596- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2597 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002598 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002599 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002600 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2601 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002602 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2603 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002604
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002605- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2606 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2607 currently running.
2608
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002609- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2610 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2611 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2612 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2613
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002614- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2615 as directory names.
2616
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002617- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2618 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2619
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002620- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2621 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2622
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002623- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002624 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2625 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002626
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002627- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2628 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2629 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2630 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2631 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2632
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002633- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2634 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2635 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2636 removed.
2637
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002638- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2639 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2640 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2641
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002642- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2643 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2644 to __debug__.
2645
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002646- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2647 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2648 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2649
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002650- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2651 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2652 deprecated now.
2653
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002654- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2655 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2656 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002657
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002658- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
2659 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
2660 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
2661 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
2662 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00002663
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00002664- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
2665 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
2666
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002667- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
2668 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
2669 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002670 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002671 is backward compatible.
2672
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00002673- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
2674 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
2675 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
2676 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
2677 could access a pointer to freed memory.
2678
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00002679- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
2680 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
2681 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
2682 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
2683 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
2684 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002685
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00002686- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
2687 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
2688
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002689- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
2690 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
2691
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002692- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
2693 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
2694 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
2695 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
2696 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
2697
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00002698- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
2699 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
2700 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
2701
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002702- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00002703 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
2704
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00002705- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
2706 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
2707 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00002708
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00002709- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
2710 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
2711
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00002712- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
2713 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
2714 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
2715
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00002716- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
2717
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002718Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002719-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002720
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00002721- Added three operators to the operator module:
2722 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
2723 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
2724 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
2725
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00002726- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
2727
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002728- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
2729 archives.
2730
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002731- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
2732 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
2733 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
2734
2735 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
2736
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002737- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
2738 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
2739 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00002740 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002741
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00002742- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
2743 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
2744 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
2745 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002746 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
2747 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
2748 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
2749 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00002750
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00002751- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
2752 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00002753
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00002754- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
2755
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00002756- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
2757 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
2758
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00002759- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
2760 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
2761 supported.
2762
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00002763- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
2764
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00002765- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
2766 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00002767
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00002768- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
2769 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
2770
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002771- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
2772
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002773- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
2774 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
2775
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00002776- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
2777 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
2778 functions but callable type objects.
2779
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002780- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002781 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002782 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002783
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00002784- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
2785 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00002786
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00002787- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
2788 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00002789
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00002790- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
2791 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
2792 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
2793 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
2794
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00002795- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
2796 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00002797
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00002798- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
2799 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
2800 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
2801 and __imul__.
2802
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00002803- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00002804 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
2805 is called.
2806
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00002807- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
2808 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
2809 interpreter was compiled.
2810
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002811- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
2812 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
2813 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002814 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002815 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
2816 1, not 2.
2817
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00002818- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
2819 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
2820 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
2821 limit.
2822
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00002823- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
2824 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
2825 bug #623464.
2826
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00002827- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
2828 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
2829 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
2830 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
2831
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002832Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002833-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002834
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00002835- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
2836
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00002837- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
2838 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
2839 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
2840 with Python 2.3a2.
2841
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00002842- os.path exposes getctime.
2843
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002844- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002845 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002846 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002847 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002848 unit tests of floating point results.
2849
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00002850- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
2851 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
2852 has been increased.
2853
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002854- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
2855 executed.
2856
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00002857- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
2858 postinstallation script.
2859
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00002860- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
2861 test the current module.
2862
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002863- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00002864 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
2865 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
2866 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
2867 this behavior needs to be controlled.
2868
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002869- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002870 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002871 Ward's Optik package.
2872
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002873- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
2874 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
2875 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
2876 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
2877
2878- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
2879 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002880 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002881
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00002882- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
2883 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
2884 shelf are binary pickles.
2885
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00002886- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
2887 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
2888
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00002889- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
2890 modules are iterators now.
2891
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00002892- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
2893 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
2894 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
2895 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
2896 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
2897 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002898
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00002899- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
2900 with their entity value.
2901
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00002902- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
2903
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002904- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
2905 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00002906
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002907- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
2908 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002909 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00002910
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00002911- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
2912 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
2913 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
2914 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
2915 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
2916 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
2917 main():
2918
2919 import locale
2920 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
2921
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00002922- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
2923 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
2924
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00002925- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
2926 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
2927 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
2928 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
2929 to the new standard.
2930
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00002931- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
2932 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
2933 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
2934 an extension to the database.
2935
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002936- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
2937 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
2938 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
2939 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00002940 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002941
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002942- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002943 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002944
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002945- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
2946 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
2947 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
2948 bounded integers.
2949
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00002950- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
2951 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
2952 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
2953 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
2954 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
2955 in existence.
2956
2957 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
2958 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
2959 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
2960 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
2961 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
2962 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
2963
2964 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
2965 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
2966 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
2967 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
2968
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00002969- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
2970 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
2971 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
2972
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00002973- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
2974
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002975- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
2976 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
2977 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
2978 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
2979
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00002980- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
2981 argument.
2982
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00002983- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
2984 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
2985 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
2986 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
2987 [SF patch 560794].
2988
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002989- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
2990 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
2991 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002992 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
2993 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
2994 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002995
2996- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
2997 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00002998
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00002999- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3000 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3001 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3002 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003003
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003004- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3005 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3006 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3007 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3008 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3009
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003010- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003011
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003012- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3013
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003014- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3015 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3016 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3017 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3018 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3019 identical to None.
3020
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003021- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3022 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3023 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3024 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3025 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3026 results now.
3027
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003028- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3029 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3030
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003031- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3032 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3033 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3034 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3035 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3036 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3037 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3038 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3039
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003040- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3041
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003042- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3043 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3044
3045- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3046 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3047 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3048 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3049 and other systems.
3050
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003051- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3052 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3053 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3054 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 +00003055 work well with these.
3056
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003057- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3058
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003059- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003060 connections.
3061
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003062- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3063 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3064 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3065
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003066- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3067 sets
3068
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003069- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3070 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3071 name.
3072
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003073- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3074 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3075 passed in.
3076
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003077- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003078 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003079 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3080 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003081
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003082- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3083
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003084- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3085
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003086- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3087 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3088 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3089
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003090- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3091 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3092 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3093 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003094 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003095
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003096- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003097 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003098 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003099
3100- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3101 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3102 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3103
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003104- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003105 the value of its expression argument.
3106
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003107- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3108 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3109 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3110
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003111- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3112 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3113 skipstone browser was included.
3114
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003115- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3116 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3117
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003118Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003119-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003120
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003121- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3122 names in addition to accepting file names.
3123
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003124- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3125 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3126 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3127 still used and useful.)
3128
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003129- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3130 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3131 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3132 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003133
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003134- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3135 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3136 the generated binary.
3137
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003138Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003139-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003140
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003141- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3142
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003143- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3144 except in the hands of experts.
3145
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003146- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003147 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3148 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3149 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003150
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003151- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3152 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3153 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3154 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3155 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3156 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3157 builds.
3158
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003159- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3160 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3161 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3162 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3163 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3164 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3165 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3166 new type.
3167
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003168- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003169
3170 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3171 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3172 positive infinities.
3173
3174 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3175 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3176 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3177 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3178 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3179 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3180 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3181
3182 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3183
3184 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3185
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003186- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3187 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3188 size of the executable.
3189
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003190- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3191 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3192 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3193 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003194
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003195- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3196
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003197- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3198 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3199 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003200
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003201- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3202 well as Unix.
3203
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003204- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3205 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3206 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3207 modules in the README file for details.
3208
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003209C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003210-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003211
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003212- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3213 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003214 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003215 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003216 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003217
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003218- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3219 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3220 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3221 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3222 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3223 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003224 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003225 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3226 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3227 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3228 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3229 aligned.)
3230
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003231- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3232 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3233 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3234
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003235- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3236 level.
3237
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003238- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3239 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3240 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3241 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3242 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3243
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003244- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3245 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3246 code.
3247
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003248- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3249 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3250 adjusting for negative indices.
3251
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003252- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3253 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3254 object.
3255
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003256- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3257 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3258 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3259
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003260- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3261 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003262
3263- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3264
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003265- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3266 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3267 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3268 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3269
3270- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3271
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003272- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003273
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003274- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003275 without going through the buffer API.
3276
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003277- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003278
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003279- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3280 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3281 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3282 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3283
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003284- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3285 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3286
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003287- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003288 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3289
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003290New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003291-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003292
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003293- OpenVMS is now supported.
3294
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003295- AtheOS is now supported.
3296
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003297- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3298
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003299- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3300
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003301Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003302-----
3303
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003304- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3305 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3306 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003307
3308Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003309-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003310
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003311- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3312 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3313 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3314 bugs.
3315 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003316 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003317 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3318 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003319 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003320
3321- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003322 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003323
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003324- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3325 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3326
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003327- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3328 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003329 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003330 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3331
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003332- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3333 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3334 use files" uninstall option).
3335
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003336- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3337
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003338- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3339 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3340
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003341- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3342 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3343 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3344
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003345- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3346 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3347 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3348 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3349 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003350 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3351 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3352 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003353
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003354- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003355 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003356 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3357 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3358 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3359 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3360 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3361 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3362 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3363 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3364 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3365 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3366 work around.
3367
3368- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3369 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3370 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3371 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3372 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3373 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3374 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3375 specified with O_CREAT too).
3376
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003377Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003378----
3379
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003380- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003381
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003382- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3383 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3384 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3385
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003386- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3387 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3388 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3389
3390- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3391 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3392 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3393 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3394 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3395 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3396 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3397 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003398
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003399- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3400 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3401 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003402
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003403- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3404 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3405 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3406 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3407 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003408
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003409- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3410 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3411 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003412
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003413- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3414 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003415
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003416- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3417 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3418 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3419 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3420 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003421
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003422- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3423 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3424 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3425
3426- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3427 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3428 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003429
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003430- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3431 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3432 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3433 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003434 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003435
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003436- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3437 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003438
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003439- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3440 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003441
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003442- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003443 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003444 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3445 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003446
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003447
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003448What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003449===============================
3450
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003451*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3452
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003453Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003454--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003455
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003456- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3457 with a custom metaclass.
3458
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003459Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003460-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003461
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003462- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3463 are proxies.
3464
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003465Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003466-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003467
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003468- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3469 very short strings.
3470
3471- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3472 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3473 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3474 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3475 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3476
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003477Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003478-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003479
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003480- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3481 close or delete time).
3482
3483- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3484 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3485
3486- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3487
3488- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003489 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003490
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003491Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003492-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003493
3494Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003495-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003496
3497C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003498-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003499
3500New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003501-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003502
3503Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003504-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003505
3506Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003507-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003508
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003509- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3510
3511- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3512 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3513
3514- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3515 deleted at process exit time.
3516
3517- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3518 in backslash.
3519
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003520Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003521----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003522
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003523- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3524 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3525 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3526
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003527
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003528What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003529===========================
3530
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003531*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3532
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003533Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003534--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003535
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003536- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3537 been extensively updated. See
3538
3539 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3540
3541 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3542
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003543- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3544 deleted!
3545
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003546- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3547 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3548 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3549 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3550 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3551
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003552- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3553
3554 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3555 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3556
3557 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3558 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3559 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3560 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3561 supported anyway.
3562
3563 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3564 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3565
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003566- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3567 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3568 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3569 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3570 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003571
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003572- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3573 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3574 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3575
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003576Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003577-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003578
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003579- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3580 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3581 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3582 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3583 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3584 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003585 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3586 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3587 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3588 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003589
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003590- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3591 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3592 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3593
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003594Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003595-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003596
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003597- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3598
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003599Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003600-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003601
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003602- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3603 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3604 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3605 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3606 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3607 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3608
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003609- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3610
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003611- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3612
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003613- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3614
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003615- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3616 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3617 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3618
3619- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3620
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003621Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003622-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003623
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003624- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3625 off a search on Google.
3626
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003627Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003628-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003629
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003630- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3631 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3632 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3633 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3634 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3635 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3636 other platforms should do likewise.
3637
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003638- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3639 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3640 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3641
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003642C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003643-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003644
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003645- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3646 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3647 producing key-value pairs.
3648
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003649- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003650 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003651 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3652 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3653 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3654 previously went unchallenged.
3655
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003656New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003657-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003658
3659Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003660-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003661
3662Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003663-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003664
3665Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003666----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003667
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00003668- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
3669 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003670
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003671- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
3672 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
3673 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
3674 home.
3675
3676
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003677What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003678===========================
3679
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003680*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
3681
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003682Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003683--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003684
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003685- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
3686 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003687
3688 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003689 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003690
3691 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
3692 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003693 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003694 This needs to be documented.
3695
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00003696- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
3697 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
3698
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00003699- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
3700 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
3701 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
3702
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00003703- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
3704 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
3705
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003706- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
3707 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
3708 class forbids it).
3709
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00003710- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
3711 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
3712 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
3713
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003714- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
3715
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003716Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003717-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003718
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003719- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
3720 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003721 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003722
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003723- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
3724 (like 1 + '').
3725
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003726Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003727-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003728
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003729- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
3730 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
3731 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
3732 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003733 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003734 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
3735
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00003736- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
3737 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
3738 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
3739 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
3740
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003741- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
3742 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003743 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
3744 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
3745 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003746
3747- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
3748 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003749
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00003750- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
3751 bytes on its input.
3752
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003753Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003754-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003755
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003756- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00003757 convenience function.
3758
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003759- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
3760 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
3761 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003762 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
3763 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
3764 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
3765 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
3766 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
3767 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003768
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00003769- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
3770 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
3771 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
3772 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
3773
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00003774- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
3775 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
3776 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
3777
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003778- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
3779 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
3780 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
3781 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
3782
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003783- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
3784 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003785 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003786 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
3787 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
3788 new -l and -e options.
3789
3790- statcache is now deprecated.
3791
3792- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
3793 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003794 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003795 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
3796 time properly taken into account.
3797
3798- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
3799 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
3800 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
3801 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
3802
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003803Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003804-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003805
3806Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003807-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003808
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003809- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
3810 is built with libdb3 if available.
3811
3812- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
3813
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003814C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003815-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003816
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00003817- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
3818 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
3819 PySequence_Size().
3820
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003821- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
3822
3823- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
3824 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
3825 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
3826
3827- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
3828 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
3829
3830- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
3831 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
3832
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003833New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003834-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003835
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003836- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
3837 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
3838
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00003839- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
3840 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
3841
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003842- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
3843
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003844Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003845-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003846
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003847- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
3848 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
3849
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003850Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003851-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003852
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003853Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003854----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003855
3856- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
3857 removed completely in the next release.
3858
3859- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
3860 OSX.
3861
3862- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
3863 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
3864
3865- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
3866
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003867
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003868What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003869===========================
3870
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003871*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
3872
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003873Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003874--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003875
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003876- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003877 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003878 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003879 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
3880 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003881 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
3882 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003883 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
3884 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00003885
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00003886- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
3887 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
3888
3889- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
3890 class methods, static methods, and properties.
3891
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003892Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003893-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003894
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00003895- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
3896 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
3897 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
3898 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
3899 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
3900 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
3901 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
3902 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
3903
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003904- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
3905 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
3906 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
3907 example).
3908
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003909- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003910 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003911 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003912 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003913
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003914- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
3915 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
3916 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00003917 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003918
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003919- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
3920 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
3921 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
3922 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
3923 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
3924 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
3925
3926 isinstance(x, (A, B))
3927
3928 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
3929
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003930Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003931-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003932
3933- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
3934
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003935- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
3936
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003937- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
3938 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00003939
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003940- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
3941 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
3942 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
3943 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
3944 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
3945 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00003946 attributes.
3947
3948- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
3949 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
3950 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00003951
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003952- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
3953 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
3954 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003955
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003956- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
3957 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
3958 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003959 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
3960 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
3961
3962- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
3963 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003964
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003965Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003966-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003967
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00003968- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
3969 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
3970
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003971- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
3972 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
3973 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
3974 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
3975
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00003976- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
3977 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
3978 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
3979 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
3980
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00003981 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
3982 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
3983 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
3984 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
3985 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
3986 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
3987 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
3988 without losing information).
3989
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003990- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003991 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
3992 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
3993 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
3994 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
3995 module).
3996
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003997 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003998 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
3999 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4000 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4001 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004002
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004003- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004004 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4005 encoding.
4006
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004007- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4008 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4009
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004010- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004011 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4012
4013- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4014 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4015 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4016 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4017
4018- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4019
4020- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4021 ON, and OFF.
4022
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004023- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4024 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4025
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004026Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004027-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004028
4029- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4030 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4031 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004032
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004033- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4034 been added: -X and -E.
4035
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004036Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004037-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004038
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004039- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4040 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4041
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004042C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004043-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004044
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004045- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4046 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4047 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4048 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4049 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4050
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004051- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4052 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4053 as long) arguments.
4054
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004055- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4056 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4057 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4058 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4059 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4060 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4061
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004062- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4063 input.
4064
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004065New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004066-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004067
4068Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004069-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004070
4071Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004072-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004073
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004074- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4075 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4076 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4077
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004078- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4079 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4080 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004081 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004082
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004083 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4084 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4085 import signal
4086 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004087
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004088 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004089 while 1:
4090 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004091 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004092 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4093 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4094 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4095 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004096
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004097
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004098What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4099===========================
4100
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004101*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4102
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004103Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004104--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004105
4106- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4107 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4108 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4109
4110- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4111 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4112 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4113 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4114 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4115 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4116 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004117
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004118- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004119 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004120 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4121 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4122 associate a docstring with a property.
4123
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004124- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4125 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4126 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4127 other built-in object types.
4128
4129- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4130 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4131 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4132 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4133 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4134
4135- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4136 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4137
4138- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4139 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004140 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004141 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4142 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4143 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4144 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4145 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4146
4147- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4148 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4149 class.
4150
4151- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4152 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4153 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4154 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4155
4156- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4157 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4158 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4159 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4160
4161- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4162 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4163
4164- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4165 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4166 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4167 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4168 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004169 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004170 with the same value as s.
4171
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004172- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4173
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004174Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004175----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004176
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004177- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4178
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004179- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4180 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4181 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4182 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4183 objects.
4184
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004185- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4186 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004187 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4188 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4189
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004190- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4191 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4192 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4193
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004194Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004195-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004196
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004197- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4198 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4199 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4200 by the instances.
4201
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004202- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4203 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4204 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4205
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004206- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4207 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4208 before the entire comparison is complete.
4209
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004210- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4211 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4212 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4213
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004214- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4215 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4216 getwriter().
4217
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004218- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4219 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4220
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004221- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004222 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4223 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4224
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004225- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4226 iterable object.
4227
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004228- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4229 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004230
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004231- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4232 authentication.
4233
4234- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4235 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004236
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004237- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004238 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4239 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4240 a sample driver.)
4241
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004242Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004243-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004244
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004245- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4246 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4247 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4248 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4249 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4250 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4251 kernel has large file support.
4252
4253- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4254 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4255 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4256 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4257 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4258
4259- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4260 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4261 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4262
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004263C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004264-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004265
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004266- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4267 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4268
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004269New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004270-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004271
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004272- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4273 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4274
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004275Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004276-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004277
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004278- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4279 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4280 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4281 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4282 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4283
4284- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4285 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4286 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4287 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4288
4289- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4290 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4291
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004292Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004293-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004294
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004295- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004296 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4297 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004298
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004299
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004300What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4301===========================
4302
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004303*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4304
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004305Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004306----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004307
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004308- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4309 big to represent as a C double.
4310
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004311- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4312 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4313 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4314 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4315 restriction).
4316
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004317- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4318 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4319 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4320 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4321 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4322
4323 >>> dir([])
4324 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4325 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4326 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4327 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4328 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4329 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4330 'reverse', 'sort']
4331
4332 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4333
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004334- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004335 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4336 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4337 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4338 OverflowError exception.
4339
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004340- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004341 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004342 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4343 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4344 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4345 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4346 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004347 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004348 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4349 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4350
4351 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4352 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4353 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4354 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004355
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004356- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004357 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4358 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4359 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4360 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4361 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4362 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4363 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4364 once it is created.
4365
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004366- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4367 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4368 (key, value) pairs.
4369
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004370- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004371 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4372 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4373
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004374- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4375 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4376 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4377 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4378 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004379
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004380- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004381 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4382 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4383
4384 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4385
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004386- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004387 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4388
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004389Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004390-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004391
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004392- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004393 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4394 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004395
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004396- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4397 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4398 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4399 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4400 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4401 in this area anymore).
4402
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004403- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4404 threading.Timer.
4405
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004406- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4407 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4408
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004409- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004410 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4411
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004412- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004413 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4414 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4415 converted to Python longs.
4416
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004417- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004418 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4419
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004420- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4421 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4422 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4423
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004424Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004425-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004426
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004427- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4428 division operators as per PEP 238.
4429
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004430Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004431-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004432
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004433- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4434 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4435 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4436 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4437
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004438C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004439-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004440
4441- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004442
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004443- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4444 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004445 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004446
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004447 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4448 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004449 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004450 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004451
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004452- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004453 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4454 module:
4455
4456 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004457
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004458 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4459 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004460
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004461 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4462 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004463
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004464 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4465
4466 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4467
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004468- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004469 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4470 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4471 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004472
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004473New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004474-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004475
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004476- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4477 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4478 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4479 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4480 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004481
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004482Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004483-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004484
4485Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004486-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004487
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004488- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4489 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4490 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4491 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004492 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4493 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4494 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4495 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4496 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004497
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004498- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004499 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4500
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004501
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004502What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4503===========================
4504
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004505*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4506
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004507Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004508-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004509
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004510- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4511 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4512
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004513- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4514 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4515 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004516
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004517- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4518 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4519 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4520 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004521
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004522- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4523
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004524- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004525
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004526Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004527-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004528
4529- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004530 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004531 the module docstring for details.
4532
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004533Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004534-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004535
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004536- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004537 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4538 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4539 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004540
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004541- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4542 Nick Mathewson.
4543
4544Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004545----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004546
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004547- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4548 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4549 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4550 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4551 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4552 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4553 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4554 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4555
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004556- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4557 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4558 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4559 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4560
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004561- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4562 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4563 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4564 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4565 come a long way).
4566
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004567- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4568 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4569 write filters for these warnings).
4570
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004571- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4572 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4573 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4574 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4575 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4576
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004577- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4578 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4579 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4580 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4581 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4582 older distribution.
4583
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004584Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004585-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004586
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004587- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4588 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004589 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004590
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004591- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4592 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4593 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4594
4595- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4596
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004597- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4598
4599- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4600
4601- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4602
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004603- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004604
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004605- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4606
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004607New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004608-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004609
4610C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004611-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004612
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004613- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4614 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4615 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4616 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4617 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4618 against buffer overruns.
4619
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004620- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004621 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4622 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004623 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4624 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4625 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4626
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004627- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4628 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4629 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4630 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4631 deprecated.
4632
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004633Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004634-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004635
4636- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4637 relevant is found.
4638
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004639
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004640What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004641===========================
4642
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004643*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4644
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004645Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004646----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004647
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004648- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4649 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4650 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4651 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4652 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4653 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4654 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4655 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004656 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004657 repaired.
4658
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004659- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00004660 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004661 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
4662 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
4663 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
4664 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
4665 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
4666 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
4667 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
4668 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
4669
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00004670- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
4671 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
4672 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
4673 leading BMO character).
4674
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004675- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
4676 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
4677 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
4678
4679 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
4680 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
4681 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004682
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004683 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
4684 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
4685 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
4686 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
4687 for various simple to use conversions.
4688
4689 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
4690 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
4691
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004692 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4693 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
4694 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
4695 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
4696 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4697 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
4698 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4699 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
4700 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4701 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
4702 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4703 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
4704 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4705 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
4706 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004707
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004708- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
4709 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
4710 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004711 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004712 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004713
4714 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004715 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
4716 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
4717 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
4718 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
4719 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004720 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
4721 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004722
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004723 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
4724 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
4725 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004726 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004727
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00004728- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
4729 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
4730 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
4731 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
4732 floating arithmetic,
4733
4734 x = 9007199254740992.0
4735 print long(x)
4736
4737 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
4738 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
4739 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
4740 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
4741 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
4742 functions are of good quality).
4743
4744 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
4745 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
4746 algorithms to break.
4747
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00004748- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
4749 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
4750 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
4751 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
4752 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
4753 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
4754 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
4755 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
4756 order.
4757
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004758- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
4759 operation along the most common code paths.
4760
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004761- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
4762 the same as dict.has_key(x).
4763
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00004764- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
4765 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
4766 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
4767 {}.update(UserDict())
4768
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004769- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
4770 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
4771 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
4772 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
4773 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
4774 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
4775 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
4776 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
4777
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004778- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004779 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004780
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004781 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00004782 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
4783 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00004784 join() method of strings
4785 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004786 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
4787 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004788 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00004789 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004790
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00004791- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
4792 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
4793
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004794- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
4795 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
4796
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00004797- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
4798 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
4799 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
4800 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
4801
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004802- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
4803 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004804 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004805 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
4806 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00004807
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00004808- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
4809
4810
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004811Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004812-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004813
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004814- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004815 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004816 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
4817 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
4818
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00004819- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
4820 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
4821
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00004822- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
4823 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
4824 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
4825 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
4826
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00004827- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
4828 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
4829 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
4830
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00004831- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
4832
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00004833- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
4834
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00004835- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
4836 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
4837 that are still imported into string.py).
4838
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004839- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
4840
4841- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
4842 Now it does.
4843
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004844- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
4845
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004846- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
4847 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
4848 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
4849 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
4850 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004851 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
4852 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004853
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00004854- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
4855 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
4856 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
4857 'help(object)'.
4858
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004859Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004860-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004861
4862- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004863 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004864 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
4865 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
4866
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004867- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004868 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
4869 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004870
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004871C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004872-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004873
4874- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
4875 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004876
4877----
4878
4879**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**