blob: 7752349fa8089179864ad851601be0b0624e7388 [file] [log] [blame]
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
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10*Release date: DD-MMM-YYYY*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +000015- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
16 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
17 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
18
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +000019- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
20 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
21 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
22 freelist.
23
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +000024- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
25 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
26
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +000027- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
28 number.
29
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +000030- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
31 a TypeError exception.
32
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +000033Extension modules
34-----------------
35
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +000036- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
37
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +000038- readline.clear_history was added.
39
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +000040- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
41
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +000042- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
43
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +000044- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
45
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +000046- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
47
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +000048Library
49-------
50
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +000051- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
52 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
53
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +000054- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
55
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +000056- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
57 empty lists.
58
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +000059- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
60 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
61 and shelves.
62
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +000063- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
64 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
65
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +000066- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +000067 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
68 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +000069
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +000070- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
71 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
72 allow any iterable. Also the Set.update() has been deprecated because
73 it duplicates Set.union_update().
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +000074
Raymond Hettinger3081d592003-08-09 18:30:57 +000075- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
76 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
77 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
78
Raymond Hettingerb5a42082003-08-08 05:10:41 +000079- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
80 of raising a TypeError exception.
81
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +000082- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +000083 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
84 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
85
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +000086- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
87 and removed in Py2.4.
88
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +000089Tools/Demos
90-----------
91
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +000092- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
93 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
94 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
95 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
96
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +000097- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
98
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +000099- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
100 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
101 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
102 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
103 now.
104
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000105- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
106 in effect
107
108- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
109 C-c C-h
110
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +0000111- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
112 -d option was given.
113
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000114Build
115-----
116
117C API
118-----
119
120New platforms
121-------------
122
123Tests
124-----
125
126Windows
127-------
128
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +0000129- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
130 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
131 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
132
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000133Mac
134----
135
136
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000137What's New in Python 2.3 final?
138===============================
139
140*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
141
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000142IDLE
143----
144
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +0000145- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
146 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
147 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
148 context-menu actions.
149
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000150- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
151 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
152 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
153 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
154 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
155 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
156 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
157 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
158 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
159
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000160
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000161What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
162=============================================
163
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +0000164*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000165
166Core and builtins
167-----------------
168
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000169- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000170 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000171 comment at the end are still unsupported.
172
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000173Extension modules
174-----------------
175
176- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
177 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
178 than once. This has been fixed.
179
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +0000180- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
181 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
182 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
183 call.
184
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000185- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
186
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000187Library
188-------
189
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000190- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
191 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
192
193- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
194 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
195 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
196 restored.
197
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000198IDLE
199----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000200
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000201- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000202
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000203Build
204-----
205
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000206- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
207 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
208
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000209C API
210-----
211
212Windows
213-------
214
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +0000215- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
216 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
217
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000218- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
219
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000220Mac
221---
222
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000223- Various fixes to pimp.
224
225- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
226
227- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
228 more problems than it solves.
229
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000230
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000231What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
232=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000233
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +0000234*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
235
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000236Core and builtins
237-----------------
238
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +0000239- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
240 by sys.setcheckinterval().
241
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000242- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
243 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000244 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000245
246- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
247 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
248 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000249 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000250
251- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
252 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000253
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000254- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
255 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
256 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
257
258- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000259 770247.
260
261- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000262
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000263Extension modules
264-----------------
265
266- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
267 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
268
269- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
270
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000271- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
272
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +0000273- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
274 contained within the _strptime module.
275
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000276- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
277 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
278
279- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000280 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
281
282- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
283 the find_class attribute, if present.
284
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000285- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000286
287 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
288 (SF bug 763298).
289
290 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +0000291 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
292 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
293 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000294
295 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
296
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000297Library
298-------
299
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000300- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
301
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +0000302- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
303 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
304 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
305 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
306 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
307 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
308 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
309 or Tester().
310
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000311- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
312 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
313 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
314 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
315 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
316 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
317 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
318 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
319 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +0000320
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000321 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +0000322
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +0000323- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
324 weren't before was an oversight.
325
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000326- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
327 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
328
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +0000329- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
330 when there are no lines.
331
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +0000332- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
333 which could occur with Tk 8.4
334
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000335- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
336 to child processes.
337
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000338- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
339
340- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
341
342- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
343 xmlrpclib.
344
345- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
346 responses.
347
348- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
349 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
350
351- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
352 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
353 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
354
355- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
356 used as patterns.
357
358- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
359 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
360 than Tk 8.3.
361
362- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
363
364- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000365
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000366Tools/Demos
367-----------
368
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000369- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
370
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +0000371- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
372
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000373- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000374
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000375Build
376-----
377
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000378- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
379
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000380- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
381
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000382- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
383 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000384
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000385- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
386 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
387 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000388
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000389C API
390-----
391
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000392- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
393 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
394
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000395Windows
396-------
397
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000398- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
399 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
400 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
401 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
402 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
403 Python exception ::
404
405 thread.error: can't start new thread
406
407 is raised now.
408
409- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
410 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
411 instead of from DLL teardown.
412
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000413Mac
414---
415
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000416- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +0000417 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000418 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
419 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
420 the executable in the bundle.
421
422- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000423
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +0000424- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
425
426- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
427 on Panther.
428
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000429What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
430================================
431
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +0000432*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000433
434Core and builtins
435-----------------
436
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +0000437- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
438 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
439 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
440 with the -i option.
441
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +0000442- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
443 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
444
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000445- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
446 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
447
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +0000448- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
449 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
450 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
451 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
452 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
453 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
454 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
455 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
456 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
457 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
458 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
459 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
460 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +0000461
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000462- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
463 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
464 embedded in a lambda expression.
465
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +0000466- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
467 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
468 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
469 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
470 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
471
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000472- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
473 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
474 matches the restriction on classic classes.
475
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +0000476- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
477 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
478
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +0000479- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
480 It's writable again.
481
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000482- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
483 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
484 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000485 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000486
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000487- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
488 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
489 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
490
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000491Extension modules
492-----------------
493
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +0000494- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
495 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
496
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000497- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
498 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
499 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
500 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
501
502- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
503 collection.
504
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +0000505- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
506 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
507 unique within a single program run.
508
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +0000509- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
510 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
511
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +0000512- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
513 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
514
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +0000515- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
516 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +0000517
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +0000518- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
519
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +0000520- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
521 Fixes SF bug #730685.
522
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +0000523- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
524 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
525 for many BSD-derived systems.
526
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000527
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000528Library
529-------
530
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +0000531- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
532 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
533 primary ones:
534
535 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
536 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
537 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
538
539 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
540 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
541 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
542 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
543 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
544 framework features (which doctest lacks).
545
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +0000546- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
547 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
548 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
549 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
550 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
551 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
552 argument.
553
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000554- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
555 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
556 in the archive.
557
558- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
559 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
560
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +0000561- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
562 569574).
563
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000564- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
565 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
566 no more.
567
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000568- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
569 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
570 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
571 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
572 code coverage.
573
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +0000574- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
575 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
576 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000577 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
578 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +0000579
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +0000580- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
581 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
582 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +0000583 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +0000584
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +0000585- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
586
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +0000587- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
588 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
589 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
590 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
591
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +0000592- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
593 handling.
594
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +0000595- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
596 __doc__ of data descriptors.
597
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +0000598- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
599 in socket.py.
600
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +0000601- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
602
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +0000603- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
604 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
605 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
606 opener with proxy support.
607
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +0000608- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
609
610- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
611
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000612Tools/Demos
613-----------
614
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +0000615- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
616
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000617- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
618
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +0000619- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
620 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +0000621
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +0000622- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
623 files.
624
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000625Build
626-----
627
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000628- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +0000629 different root directory.
630
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000631C API
632-----
633
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +0000634- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
635 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
636 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
637 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
638 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
639 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
640 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
641 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
642 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
643 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
644
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +0000645- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
646 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
647 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
648 from Python.
649
650
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000651New platforms
652-------------
653
654None this time.
655
656Tests
657-----
658
659- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
660 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
661
662Windows
663-------
664
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +0000665- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
666
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +0000667- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
668 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
669 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
670 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
671 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
672 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
673 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
674 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
675 that's what it's for.
676
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000677Mac
678---
679
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +0000680- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
681 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
682 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
683 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +0000684- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
685 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
686- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000687
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +0000688SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
689------------------------------------
690
691430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
692598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
693622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
694661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
695683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
696697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
697713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
698724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
699727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
700729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
701730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
702731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
703732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
704733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
705735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
706740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
707744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
708745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
709747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
710749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
711751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
712753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
713755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
714757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
715760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
716
717
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000718What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
719================================
720
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +0000721*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000722
723Core and builtins
724-----------------
725
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +0000726- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
727 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
728
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +0000729- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
730 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
731 and cannot be strings).
732
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +0000733- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
734 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
735 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
736 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
737
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +0000738- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
739 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
740 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
741 Python itself.
742
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +0000743- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
744 the referenced object, if it has one.
745
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +0000746- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
747 the thread started at
748 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
749
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +0000750- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
751 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
752 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
753 placed on a list index.
754
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +0000755- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
756 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
757 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
758 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
759
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000760- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
761 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
762 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
763 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
764 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
765 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
766 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
767
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +0000768- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
769 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
770 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
771 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
772 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
773
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +0000774- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
775 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +0000776
777- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
778 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
779 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
780 #693195.)
781
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +0000782- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
783 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000784
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +0000785- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +0000786 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +0000787 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
788 interpreter executions, would fail.
789
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +0000790- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +0000791 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +0000792 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +0000793
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000794Extension modules
795-----------------
796
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +0000797- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
798 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
799 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
800 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
801
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +0000802- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
803 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
804
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +0000805- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
806 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
807 and Greg Chapman.)
808
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +0000809- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
810 recursively.
811
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +0000812- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +0000813 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
814 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
815 leaks.
816
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +0000817- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
818
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +0000819- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
820 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
821 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
822 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
823 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
824 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
825 #705836.
826
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000827- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +0000828 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
829
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +0000830- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
831 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
832 See SF bug #692416.
833
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +0000834- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
835 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
836
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +0000837- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
838 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
839 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000840
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +0000841- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +0000842 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
843 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
844
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +0000845- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
846 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
847 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
848 timeouts to work properly.
849
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000850Library
851-------
852
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +0000853- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
854 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
855 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
856 future release.
857
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +0000858- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
859 for querying platform dependent features.
860
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +0000861- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +0000862
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +0000863- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
864 pickle protocol versions.
865
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +0000866- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
867 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
868 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
869
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +0000870- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
871
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +0000872- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
873 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
874 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
875 modules.
876
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +0000877- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
878 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
879 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
880
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +0000881- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
882 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
883
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +0000884- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
885 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
886 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
887
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000888- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +0000889 MS Office extensions.
890
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +0000891- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
892 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
893
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +0000894- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
895 execution speed of expressions and statements.
896
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +0000897- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
898 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
899 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
900 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
901 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
902 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
903
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +0000904- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
905 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
906 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000907
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +0000908- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
909 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
910 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
911
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +0000912- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
913
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +0000914- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
915 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
916 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
917
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000918Tools/Demos
919-----------
920
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +0000921- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
922 See the module docstring for details.
923
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000924Build
925-----
926
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +0000927- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
928 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000929
930C API
931-----
932
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +0000933- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
934
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +0000935- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
936 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
937 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
938
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +0000939- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
940 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +0000941
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +0000942 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
943 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
944 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +0000945
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +0000946- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +0000947 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
948
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +0000949- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
950 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
951 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000952
953New platforms
954-------------
955
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +0000956None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000957
958Tests
959-----
960
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +0000961- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
962 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000963
964Windows
965-------
966
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +0000967- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
968 function.
969
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +0000970- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
971 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000972
973Mac
974---
975
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +0000976- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
977 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +0000978
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +0000979- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
980 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +0000981
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +0000982- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
983 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
984 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000985
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +0000986- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +0000987 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
988 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000989
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +0000990- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
991 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000992
993
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000994What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
995=================================
996
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +0000997*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000998
999Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001000-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001001
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00001002- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
1003 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
1004 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
1005
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00001006- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
1007 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
1008 (SF patch #664376.)
1009
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001010- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
1011 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
1012 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
1013 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
1014 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
1015 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00001016 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001017
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001018- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
1019 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
1020 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
1021 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001022 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001023
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00001024- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
1025 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
1026 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
1027 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
1028 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
1029 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
1030 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
1031 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
1032 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
1033 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
1034 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
1035
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00001036- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
1037 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
1038 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
1039 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
1040 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
1041 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
1042
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00001043- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
1044 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
1045
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00001046- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
1047 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
1048 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
1049 case.)
1050
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00001051- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
1052 passed as unicode strings.
1053
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00001054- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
1055 See SF bug #683467.
1056
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00001057- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
1058 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
1059
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00001060- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
1061
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00001062- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
1063
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00001064- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
1065 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
1066 arguments.
1067
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00001068- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
1069 See SF bug #667147.
1070
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001071- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001072 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001073 See SF bug #676155.
1074
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001075- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001076 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001077 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
1078 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
1079 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
1080 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
1081 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
1082 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001083
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001084Extension modules
1085-----------------
1086
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001087- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
1088 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1089 tp_as_number pointer.
1090
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001091- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
1092 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
1093 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
1094 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
1095 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
1096
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001097- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
1098
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00001099- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
1100
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001101- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00001102 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001103 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
1104 patch #678531.)
1105
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00001106- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
1107 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
1108
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00001109- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
1110 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
1111
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00001112- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
1113
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00001114- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
1115 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
1116 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
1117
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001118- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
1119
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001120- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
1121 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
1122
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001123- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001124
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001125- datetime changes:
1126
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00001127 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
1128
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00001129 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
1130 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
1131 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
1132 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
1133 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
1134 now.
1135
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001136 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001137 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
1138 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001139
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001140 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001141 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001142 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
1143 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
1144 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
1145 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001146
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001147 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
1148 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
1149 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001150 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
1151
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001152 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
1153 by a later example coded by Guido.
1154
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001155 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001156 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
1157 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
1158 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001159 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
1160 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
1161
1162 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
1163 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
1164 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
1165 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
1166 tzinfo subclass instance.
1167
1168 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
1169 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
1170 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
1171 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
1172 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
1173 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
1174 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
1175 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001176
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001177 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
1178 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
1179 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
1180 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
1181 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001182 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
1183
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001184 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001185
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001186 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
1187 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
1188 as a naive datetime object.
1189
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00001190 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
1191 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
1192 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
1193
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00001194 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
1195 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
1196 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
1197 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
1198 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
1199 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
1200 comparison.
1201
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001202 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
1203 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
1204 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
1205 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001206 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001207
1208 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001209
1210 and ::
1211
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001212 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
1213
1214 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
1215 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
1216 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
1217 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
1218
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00001219 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
1220 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
1221 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
1222 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
1223 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
1224
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001225 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
1226 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00001227 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
1228 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001229
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001230Library
1231-------
1232
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001233- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
1234 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
1235
1236- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
1237 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
1238 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
1239 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
1240 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
1241 See PEP 307 for details.
1242
1243- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
1244 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
1245
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001246- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
1247 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001248 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001249 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
1250 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001251 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001252
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00001253- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
1254 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
1255
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001256- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
1257 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
1258 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
1259
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00001260- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
1261
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00001262- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
1263 exception.
1264
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00001265- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
1266 class.
1267
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00001268- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
1269 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
1270 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
1271
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00001272- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
1273 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
1274
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001275- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00001276 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
1277 See SF bug #659228.
1278
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00001279- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
1280 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
1281 See SF patch #651082.
1282
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00001283- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001284
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00001285- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
1286 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
1287
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001288- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001289 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001290
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00001291- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
1292 DOS paths from other platforms.
1293
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001294Tools/Demos
1295-----------
1296
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001297- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
1298 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
1299 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
1300 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
1301 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
1302 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
1303 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
1304 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
1305 example:
1306
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00001307 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
1308 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001309
1310 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
1311
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001312
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001313Build
1314-----
1315
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001316- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
1317 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
1318 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001319 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
1320
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001321 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
1322
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00001323- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
1324 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
1325 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
1326 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
1327 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
1328 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
1329 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
1330 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
1331 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
1332
1333- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
1334 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
1335 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
1336 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
1337
1338- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
1339 from the Tools/scripts directory.
1340
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001341C API
1342-----
1343
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001344- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
1345 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00001346
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001347- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
1348 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1349 tp_as_number pointer.
1350
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00001351- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
1352 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
1353 (SF #681367)
1354
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00001355- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
1356 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
1357 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
1358 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00001359
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001360Tests
1361-----
1362
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00001363- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001364 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
1365 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
1366 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
1367 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
1368 pydoc.)
1369
1370- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
1371
1372- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001373
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001374Windows
1375-------
1376
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001377- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
1378 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
1379 time).
1380
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00001381- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
1382 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
1383
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001384- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
1385 release without strong cryptography.
1386
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001387- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001388 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001389
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001390- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
1391 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
1392
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001393Mac
1394---
1395
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001396- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
1397 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001398
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00001399- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
1400 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
1401 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001402
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001403- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
1404 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001405
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001406- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
1407 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
1408 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
1409 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001410
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001411- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00001412 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
1413 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
1414 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001415
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001416
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001417What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001418=================================
1419
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00001420*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001421
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001422Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001423--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001424
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00001425- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
1426
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001427- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
1428 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001429 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001430 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001431 a different meaning than before.
1432
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001433- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001434 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001435 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001436
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001437- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001438 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001439 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001440
1441- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
1442 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
1443 and deallocation.
1444
1445- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
1446 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
1447
1448- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
1449 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
1450 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
1451 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
1452 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
1453
1454- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
1455 now detected by the garbage collector.
1456
1457- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
1458 [SF bug 519621]
1459
1460- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
1461 identifier.
1462
1463- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
1464 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
1465 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
1466 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
1467 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
1468 [SF bug 563060]
1469
1470- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
1471 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
1472 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
1473 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
1474 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
1475
1476- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
1477 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
1478 not called. [SF bug #537450]
1479
1480- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
1481
1482- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
1483 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
1484 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
1485 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
1486 state of the slots would be lost.)
1487
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001488Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001489-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001490
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001491- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001492 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
1493 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
1494 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
1495 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001496 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
1497 Jython 2.1.
1498
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001499- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001500 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001501 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
1502 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
1503 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
1504 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
1505 these, see PEP 302.
1506
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001507- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
1508 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
1509 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
1510
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00001511- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
1512 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
1513 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
1514
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00001515- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
1516 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
1517 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
1518
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00001519- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
1520 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
1521 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
1522 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
1523 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
1524 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
1525 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
1526 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
1527 releases or implementations.
1528
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001529- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00001530 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
1531 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001532
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00001533- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
1534 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
1535
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00001536- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
1537 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
1538 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
1539
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00001540- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
1541 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
1542
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001543- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
1544 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001545 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
1546 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001547
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00001548- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
1549 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
1550 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
1551 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
1552 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
1553
1554 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
1555 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
1556 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
1557 pattern.
1558
1559 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
1560 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
1561 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
1562 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
1563
1564 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
1565 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
1566 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
1567 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
1568 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
1569 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
1570
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00001571- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
1572 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
1573 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
1574 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
1575 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
1576 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
1577 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
1578 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00001579
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00001580- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
1581 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
1582 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
1583 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
1584 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00001585 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
1586 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
1587 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
1588 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
1589 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
1590 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
1591 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00001592
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00001593- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
1594 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
1595
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00001596- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
1597 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
1598 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
1599 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
1600 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
1601 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
1602 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
1603 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
1604 to Zack Weinberg!
1605
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00001606- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
1607 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
1608 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
1609 type. This has been fixed now.
1610
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00001611- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
1612 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
1613 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
1614
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00001615- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
1616 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
1617 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
1618 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
1619 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
1620 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
1621 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
1622 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00001623 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00001624
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00001625- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
1626 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
1627 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00001628
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00001629- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
1630 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
1631 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
1632 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
1633 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
1634 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
1635 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
1636 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00001637 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00001638 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
1639 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
1640
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00001641- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
1642 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
1643 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
1644 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
1645 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
1646 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
1647 this.)
1648
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00001649- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
1650 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001651 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00001652 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00001653 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
1654 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00001655 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
1656 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00001657
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00001658- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
1659 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
1660 currently running.
1661
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00001662- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
1663 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
1664 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
1665 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
1666
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00001667- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
1668 as directory names.
1669
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00001670- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
1671 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
1672
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00001673- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
1674 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
1675
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00001676- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00001677 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
1678 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00001679
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00001680- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
1681 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
1682 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
1683 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
1684 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
1685
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00001686- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
1687 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
1688 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
1689 removed.
1690
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00001691- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
1692 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
1693 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
1694
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00001695- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
1696 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
1697 to __debug__.
1698
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00001699- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
1700 string to the left with zeros. For example,
1701 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
1702
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00001703- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
1704 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
1705 deprecated now.
1706
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00001707- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
1708 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
1709 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00001710
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00001711- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
1712 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
1713 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
1714 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
1715 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00001716
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00001717- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
1718 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
1719
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00001720- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
1721 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
1722 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001723 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00001724 is backward compatible.
1725
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00001726- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
1727 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
1728 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
1729 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
1730 could access a pointer to freed memory.
1731
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00001732- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
1733 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
1734 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
1735 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
1736 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
1737 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00001738
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00001739- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
1740 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
1741
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00001742- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
1743 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
1744
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00001745- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
1746 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
1747 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
1748 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
1749 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
1750
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00001751- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
1752 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
1753 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
1754
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001755- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00001756 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
1757
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00001758- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
1759 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
1760 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00001761
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00001762- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
1763 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
1764
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00001765- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
1766 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
1767 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
1768
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00001769- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
1770
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001771Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001772-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001773
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00001774- Added three operators to the operator module:
1775 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
1776 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
1777 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
1778
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00001779- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
1780
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001781- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
1782 archives.
1783
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00001784- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
1785 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
1786 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
1787
1788 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
1789
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00001790- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
1791 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
1792 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00001793 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00001794
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00001795- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
1796 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
1797 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
1798 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001799 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
1800 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
1801 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
1802 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00001803
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00001804- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
1805 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00001806
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00001807- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
1808
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00001809- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
1810 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
1811
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00001812- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
1813 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
1814 supported.
1815
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00001816- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
1817
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00001818- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
1819 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00001820
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00001821- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
1822 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
1823
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00001824- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
1825
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00001826- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
1827 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
1828
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00001829- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
1830 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
1831 functions but callable type objects.
1832
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00001833- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00001834 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00001835 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00001836
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00001837- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
1838 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00001839
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00001840- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
1841 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00001842
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00001843- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
1844 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
1845 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
1846 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
1847
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00001848- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
1849 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00001850
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00001851- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
1852 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
1853 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
1854 and __imul__.
1855
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00001856- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00001857 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
1858 is called.
1859
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00001860- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
1861 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
1862 interpreter was compiled.
1863
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00001864- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
1865 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
1866 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00001867 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00001868 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
1869 1, not 2.
1870
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00001871- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
1872 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
1873 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
1874 limit.
1875
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00001876- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
1877 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
1878 bug #623464.
1879
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00001880- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
1881 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
1882 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
1883 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
1884
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001885Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001886-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001887
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00001888- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
1889
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00001890- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
1891 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
1892 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
1893 with Python 2.3a2.
1894
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00001895- os.path exposes getctime.
1896
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00001897- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001898 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00001899 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001900 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00001901 unit tests of floating point results.
1902
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00001903- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
1904 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
1905 has been increased.
1906
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001907- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
1908 executed.
1909
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00001910- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
1911 postinstallation script.
1912
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00001913- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
1914 test the current module.
1915
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001916- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00001917 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
1918 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
1919 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
1920 this behavior needs to be controlled.
1921
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00001922- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001923 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00001924 Ward's Optik package.
1925
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00001926- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
1927 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
1928 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
1929 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
1930
1931- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
1932 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001933 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00001934
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00001935- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
1936 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
1937 shelf are binary pickles.
1938
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00001939- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
1940 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
1941
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00001942- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
1943 modules are iterators now.
1944
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00001945- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
1946 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
1947 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
1948 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
1949 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
1950 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00001951
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00001952- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
1953 with their entity value.
1954
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00001955- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
1956
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00001957- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
1958 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00001959
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00001960- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
1961 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00001962 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00001963
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00001964- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
1965 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
1966 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
1967 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
1968 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
1969 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
1970 main():
1971
1972 import locale
1973 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
1974
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00001975- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
1976 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
1977
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00001978- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
1979 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
1980 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
1981 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
1982 to the new standard.
1983
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00001984- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
1985 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
1986 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
1987 an extension to the database.
1988
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00001989- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
1990 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
1991 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
1992 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00001993 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00001994
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00001995- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00001996 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00001997
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00001998- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
1999 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
2000 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
2001 bounded integers.
2002
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00002003- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
2004 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
2005 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
2006 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
2007 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
2008 in existence.
2009
2010 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
2011 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
2012 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
2013 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
2014 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
2015 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
2016
2017 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
2018 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
2019 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
2020 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
2021
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00002022- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
2023 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
2024 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
2025
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00002026- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
2027
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002028- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
2029 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
2030 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
2031 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
2032
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00002033- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
2034 argument.
2035
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00002036- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
2037 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
2038 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
2039 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
2040 [SF patch 560794].
2041
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002042- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
2043 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
2044 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002045 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
2046 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
2047 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002048
2049- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
2050 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00002051
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00002052- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
2053 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
2054 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
2055 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00002056
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00002057- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
2058 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
2059 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
2060 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
2061 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
2062
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002063- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00002064
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00002065- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
2066
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00002067- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
2068 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
2069 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
2070 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
2071 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
2072 identical to None.
2073
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00002074- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
2075 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
2076 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
2077 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
2078 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
2079 results now.
2080
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00002081- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
2082 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
2083
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002084- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
2085 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
2086 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
2087 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
2088 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
2089 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
2090 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
2091 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
2092
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00002093- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
2094
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00002095- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
2096 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
2097
2098- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
2099 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
2100 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
2101 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
2102 and other systems.
2103
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002104- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
2105 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
2106 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
2107 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 +00002108 work well with these.
2109
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00002110- compileall now supports quiet operation.
2111
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002112- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00002113 connections.
2114
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00002115- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
2116 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
2117 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
2118
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00002119- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
2120 sets
2121
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00002122- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
2123 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
2124 name.
2125
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00002126- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
2127 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
2128 passed in.
2129
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002130- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00002131 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00002132 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
2133 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00002134
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00002135- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
2136
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00002137- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
2138
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00002139- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
2140 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
2141 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
2142
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002143- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
2144 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
2145 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
2146 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00002147 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002148
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002149- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002150 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002151 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002152
2153- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
2154 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
2155 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
2156
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002157- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00002158 the value of its expression argument.
2159
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002160- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
2161 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
2162 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
2163
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00002164- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
2165 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
2166 skipstone browser was included.
2167
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00002168- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
2169 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
2170
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002171Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002172-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002173
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00002174- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
2175 names in addition to accepting file names.
2176
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00002177- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
2178 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
2179 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
2180 still used and useful.)
2181
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00002182- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
2183 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
2184 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
2185 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00002186
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00002187- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
2188 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
2189 the generated binary.
2190
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002191Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002192-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002193
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00002194- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
2195
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002196- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
2197 except in the hands of experts.
2198
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002199- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002200 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
2201 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
2202 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00002203
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00002204- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
2205 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
2206 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
2207 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
2208 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
2209 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
2210 builds.
2211
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002212- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
2213 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
2214 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
2215 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
2216 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
2217 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
2218 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
2219 new type.
2220
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00002221- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00002222
2223 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
2224 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
2225 positive infinities.
2226
2227 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
2228 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
2229 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
2230 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
2231 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
2232 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
2233 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
2234
2235 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
2236
2237 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
2238
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00002239- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
2240 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
2241 size of the executable.
2242
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002243- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
2244 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
2245 configure script. On other platforms, remove
2246 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00002247
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00002248- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
2249
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00002250- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
2251 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
2252 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00002253
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00002254- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
2255 well as Unix.
2256
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00002257- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
2258 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
2259 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
2260 modules in the README file for details.
2261
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002262C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002263-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002264
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002265- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
2266 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002267 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00002268 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002269 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002270
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002271- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
2272 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
2273 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
2274 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
2275 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
2276 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002277 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002278 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
2279 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
2280 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
2281 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
2282 aligned.)
2283
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00002284- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
2285 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
2286 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
2287
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002288- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
2289 level.
2290
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00002291- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
2292 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
2293 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
2294 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
2295 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
2296
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00002297- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
2298 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
2299 code.
2300
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00002301- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
2302 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
2303 adjusting for negative indices.
2304
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002305- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
2306 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
2307 object.
2308
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00002309- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
2310 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
2311 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
2312
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002313- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
2314 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00002315
2316- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
2317
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00002318- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
2319 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
2320 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
2321 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
2322
2323- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
2324
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00002325- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002326
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002327- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00002328 without going through the buffer API.
2329
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002330- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00002331
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00002332- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
2333 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
2334 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
2335 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
2336
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002337- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
2338 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
2339
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002340- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002341 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
2342
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002343New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002344-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002345
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00002346- OpenVMS is now supported.
2347
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00002348- AtheOS is now supported.
2349
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00002350- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
2351
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00002352- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
2353
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002354Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002355-----
2356
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00002357- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
2358 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
2359 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002360
2361Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002362-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002363
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002364- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
2365 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
2366 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
2367 bugs.
2368 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002369 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00002370 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
2371 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002372 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002373
2374- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00002375 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002376
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00002377- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
2378 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
2379
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002380- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
2381 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002382 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002383 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
2384
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00002385- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
2386 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
2387 use files" uninstall option).
2388
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00002389- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
2390
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002391- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
2392 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
2393
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002394- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
2395 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
2396 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
2397
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002398- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
2399 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
2400 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
2401 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
2402 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002403 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
2404 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
2405 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002406
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002407- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002408 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002409 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
2410 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
2411 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
2412 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
2413 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
2414 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
2415 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
2416 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
2417 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
2418 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
2419 work around.
2420
2421- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
2422 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
2423 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
2424 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
2425 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
2426 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
2427 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
2428 specified with O_CREAT too).
2429
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002430Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002431----
2432
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002433- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002434
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00002435- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
2436 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
2437 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
2438
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002439- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
2440 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
2441 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
2442
2443- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
2444 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
2445 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
2446 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
2447 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
2448 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
2449 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
2450 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002451
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00002452- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
2453 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
2454 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002455
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002456- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
2457 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
2458 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
2459 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
2460 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002461
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002462- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
2463 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
2464 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002465
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002466- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
2467 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002468
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002469- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
2470 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
2471 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
2472 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
2473 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002474
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002475- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
2476 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
2477 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
2478
2479- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
2480 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
2481 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002482
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002483- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
2484 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
2485 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
2486 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002487 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002488
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002489- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
2490 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002491
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002492- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
2493 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002494
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002495- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00002496 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002497 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
2498 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002499
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002500
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002501What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002502===============================
2503
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002504*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
2505
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002506Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002507--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002508
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002509- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
2510 with a custom metaclass.
2511
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002512Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002513-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002514
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002515- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
2516 are proxies.
2517
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002518Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002519-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002520
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002521- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
2522 very short strings.
2523
2524- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
2525 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
2526 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
2527 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
2528 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
2529
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002530Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002531-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002532
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002533- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
2534 close or delete time).
2535
2536- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
2537 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
2538
2539- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
2540
2541- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002542 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002543
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002544Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002545-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002546
2547Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002548-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002549
2550C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002551-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002552
2553New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002554-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002555
2556Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002557-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002558
2559Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002560-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002561
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002562- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
2563
2564- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
2565 instances are deleted at process exit time.
2566
2567- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
2568 deleted at process exit time.
2569
2570- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
2571 in backslash.
2572
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002573Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002574----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002575
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002576- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
2577 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
2578 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
2579
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002580
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00002581What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002582===========================
2583
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002584*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
2585
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002586Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002587--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002588
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002589- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
2590 been extensively updated. See
2591
2592 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
2593
2594 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
2595
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00002596- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
2597 deleted!
2598
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00002599- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
2600 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
2601 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
2602 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
2603 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
2604
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00002605- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
2606
2607 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
2608 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
2609
2610 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
2611 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
2612 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
2613 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
2614 supported anyway.
2615
2616 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
2617 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
2618
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00002619- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
2620 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
2621 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
2622 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
2623 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00002624
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00002625- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
2626 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
2627 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
2628
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002629Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002630-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002631
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00002632- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
2633 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
2634 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
2635 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
2636 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
2637 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00002638 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
2639 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
2640 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
2641 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00002642
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00002643- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
2644 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
2645 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
2646
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002647Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002648-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002649
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00002650- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
2651
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002652Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002653-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002654
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00002655- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
2656 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
2657 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
2658 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
2659 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
2660 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
2661
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00002662- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
2663
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00002664- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
2665
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00002666- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
2667
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002668- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
2669 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
2670 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
2671
2672- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
2673
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002674Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002675-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002676
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002677- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
2678 off a search on Google.
2679
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002680Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002681-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002682
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002683- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
2684 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
2685 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
2686 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
2687 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
2688 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
2689 other platforms should do likewise.
2690
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00002691- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
2692 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
2693 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
2694
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002695C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002696-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002697
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00002698- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
2699 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
2700 producing key-value pairs.
2701
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00002702- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00002703 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00002704 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
2705 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
2706 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
2707 previously went unchallenged.
2708
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002709New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002710-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002711
2712Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002713-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002714
2715Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002716-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002717
2718Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002719----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002720
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00002721- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
2722 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002723
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002724- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
2725 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
2726 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
2727 home.
2728
2729
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002730What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002731===========================
2732
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002733*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
2734
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002735Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002736--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002737
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00002738- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
2739 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00002740
2741 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00002742 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00002743
2744 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
2745 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002746 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00002747 This needs to be documented.
2748
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00002749- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
2750 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
2751
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00002752- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
2753 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
2754 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
2755
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00002756- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
2757 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
2758
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002759- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
2760 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
2761 class forbids it).
2762
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00002763- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
2764 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
2765 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
2766
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00002767- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
2768
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002769Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002770-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002771
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00002772- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
2773 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002774 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00002775
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002776- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
2777 (like 1 + '').
2778
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002779Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002780-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002781
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00002782- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
2783 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
2784 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
2785 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002786 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00002787 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
2788
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00002789- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
2790 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
2791 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
2792 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
2793
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002794- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
2795 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00002796 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
2797 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
2798 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002799
2800- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
2801 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00002802
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00002803- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
2804 bytes on its input.
2805
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002806Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002807-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002808
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00002809- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00002810 convenience function.
2811
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00002812- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
2813 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
2814 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002815 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
2816 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
2817 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
2818 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
2819 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
2820 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00002821
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00002822- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
2823 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
2824 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
2825 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
2826
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00002827- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
2828 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
2829 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
2830
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00002831- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
2832 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
2833 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
2834 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
2835
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002836- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
2837 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002838 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002839 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
2840 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
2841 new -l and -e options.
2842
2843- statcache is now deprecated.
2844
2845- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
2846 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002847 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002848 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
2849 time properly taken into account.
2850
2851- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
2852 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
2853 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
2854 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
2855
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002856Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002857-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002858
2859Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002860-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002861
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002862- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
2863 is built with libdb3 if available.
2864
2865- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
2866
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002867C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002868-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002869
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00002870- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
2871 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
2872 PySequence_Size().
2873
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002874- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
2875
2876- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
2877 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
2878 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
2879
2880- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
2881 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
2882
2883- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
2884 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
2885
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002886New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002887-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002888
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00002889- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
2890 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
2891
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00002892- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
2893 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
2894
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00002895- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
2896
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002897Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002898-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002899
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00002900- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
2901 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
2902
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002903Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002904-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002905
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002906Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002907----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002908
2909- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
2910 removed completely in the next release.
2911
2912- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
2913 OSX.
2914
2915- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
2916 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
2917
2918- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
2919
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002920
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002921What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002922===========================
2923
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002924*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
2925
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002926Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002927--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002928
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00002929- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00002930 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00002931 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00002932 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
2933 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00002934 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
2935 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00002936 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
2937 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00002938
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00002939- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
2940 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
2941
2942- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
2943 class methods, static methods, and properties.
2944
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002945Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002946-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002947
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00002948- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
2949 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
2950 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
2951 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
2952 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
2953 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
2954 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
2955 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
2956
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002957- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
2958 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
2959 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
2960 example).
2961
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00002962- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00002963 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00002964 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00002965 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00002966
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00002967- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
2968 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
2969 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00002970 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00002971
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00002972- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
2973 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
2974 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
2975 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
2976 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
2977 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
2978
2979 isinstance(x, (A, B))
2980
2981 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
2982
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002983Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002984-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002985
2986- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
2987
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00002988- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
2989
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00002990- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
2991 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00002992
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00002993- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
2994 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
2995 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
2996 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
2997 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
2998 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00002999 attributes.
3000
3001- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
3002 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
3003 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00003004
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003005- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
3006 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
3007 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003008
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003009- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
3010 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
3011 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003012 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
3013 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
3014
3015- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
3016 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003017
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003018Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003019-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003020
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00003021- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
3022 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
3023
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003024- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
3025 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
3026 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
3027 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
3028
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00003029- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
3030 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
3031 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
3032 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
3033
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00003034 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
3035 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
3036 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
3037 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
3038 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
3039 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
3040 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
3041 without losing information).
3042
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003043- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003044 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
3045 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
3046 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
3047 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
3048 module).
3049
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003050 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003051 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
3052 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
3053 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
3054 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003055
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003056- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00003057 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
3058 encoding.
3059
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00003060- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
3061 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
3062
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003063- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003064 to allow saving the message body to a file.
3065
3066- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
3067 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
3068 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
3069 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
3070
3071- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
3072
3073- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
3074 ON, and OFF.
3075
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003076- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
3077 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
3078
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003079Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003080-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003081
3082- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
3083 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
3084 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003085
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003086- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
3087 been added: -X and -E.
3088
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003089Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003090-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003091
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003092- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
3093 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
3094
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003095C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003096-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003097
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00003098- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
3099 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
3100 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
3101 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
3102 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
3103
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00003104- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
3105 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
3106 as long) arguments.
3107
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003108- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
3109 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
3110 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
3111 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
3112 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
3113 report any bugs or strange behavior).
3114
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003115- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
3116 input.
3117
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003118New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003119-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003120
3121Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003122-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003123
3124Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003125-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003126
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00003127- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
3128 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
3129 is created for .py and .pyw files.
3130
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003131- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
3132 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
3133 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003134 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003135
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003136 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
3137 # (SIGINT) behavior.
3138 import signal
3139 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003140
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003141 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003142 while 1:
3143 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003144 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003145 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
3146 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
3147 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
3148 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003149
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003150
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003151What's New in Python 2.2a4?
3152===========================
3153
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003154*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
3155
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003156Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003157--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003158
3159- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
3160 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
3161 documentation for all operations on list objects.
3162
3163- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
3164 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
3165 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
3166 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
3167 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
3168 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
3169 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003170
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003171- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003172 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003173 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
3174 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
3175 associate a docstring with a property.
3176
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003177- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
3178 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
3179 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
3180 other built-in object types.
3181
3182- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
3183 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
3184 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
3185 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
3186 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
3187
3188- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
3189 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
3190
3191- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
3192 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003193 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003194 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
3195 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
3196 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
3197 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
3198 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
3199
3200- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
3201 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
3202 class.
3203
3204- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
3205 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
3206 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
3207 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
3208
3209- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
3210 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
3211 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
3212 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
3213
3214- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
3215 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
3216
3217- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
3218 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
3219 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
3220 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
3221 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003222 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003223 with the same value as s.
3224
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00003225- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
3226
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003227Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003228----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003229
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00003230- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
3231
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00003232- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
3233 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
3234 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
3235 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
3236 objects.
3237
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003238- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
3239 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00003240 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
3241 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
3242
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003243- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
3244 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
3245 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
3246
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003247Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003248-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003249
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00003250- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3251 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
3252 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
3253 by the instances.
3254
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00003255- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
3256 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
3257 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
3258
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003259- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
3260 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
3261 before the entire comparison is complete.
3262
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00003263- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3264 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
3265 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
3266
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00003267- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
3268 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
3269 getwriter().
3270
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003271- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
3272 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
3273
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00003274- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003275 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
3276 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
3277
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00003278- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
3279 iterable object.
3280
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003281- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
3282 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003283
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003284- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
3285 authentication.
3286
3287- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
3288 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003289
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003290- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00003291 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
3292 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
3293 a sample driver.)
3294
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003295Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003296-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003297
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003298- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
3299 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
3300 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
3301 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
3302 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
3303 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
3304 kernel has large file support.
3305
3306- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
3307 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
3308 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
3309 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
3310 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
3311
3312- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
3313 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
3314 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
3315
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003316C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003317-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003318
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003319- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
3320 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
3321
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003322New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003323-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003324
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003325- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
3326 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
3327
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003328Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003329-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003330
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003331- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
3332 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
3333 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
3334 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
3335 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
3336
3337- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
3338 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
3339 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
3340 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
3341
3342- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
3343 especially in regard to reporting errors.
3344
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003345Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003346-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003347
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003348- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003349 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
3350 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003351
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003352
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003353What's New in Python 2.2a3?
3354===========================
3355
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003356*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
3357
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003358Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003359----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003360
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003361- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
3362 big to represent as a C double.
3363
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00003364- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
3365 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
3366 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
3367 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
3368 restriction).
3369
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00003370- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
3371 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
3372 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
3373 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
3374 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
3375
3376 >>> dir([])
3377 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
3378 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
3379 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
3380 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
3381 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
3382 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
3383 'reverse', 'sort']
3384
3385 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
3386
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003387- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003388 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
3389 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
3390 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
3391 OverflowError exception.
3392
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00003393- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003394 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003395 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
3396 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
3397 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
3398 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
3399 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003400 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003401 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
3402 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
3403
3404 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
3405 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
3406 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
3407 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003408
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003409- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003410 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
3411 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
3412 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
3413 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
3414 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
3415 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
3416 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
3417 once it is created.
3418
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00003419- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
3420 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
3421 (key, value) pairs.
3422
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003423- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003424 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
3425 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
3426
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00003427- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
3428 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
3429 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
3430 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
3431 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003432
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003433- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003434 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
3435 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
3436
3437 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
3438
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003439- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00003440 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
3441
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003442Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003443-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003444
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003445- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00003446 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
3447 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003448
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00003449- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
3450 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
3451 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
3452 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
3453 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
3454 in this area anymore).
3455
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00003456- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
3457 threading.Timer.
3458
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00003459- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
3460 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
3461
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003462- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003463 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
3464
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003465- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00003466 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
3467 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
3468 converted to Python longs.
3469
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003470- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003471 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
3472
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00003473- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
3474 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
3475 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
3476
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003477Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003478-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003479
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003480- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
3481 division operators as per PEP 238.
3482
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003483Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003484-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003485
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003486- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
3487 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
3488 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
3489 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
3490
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003491C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003492-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003493
3494- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003495
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003496- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
3497 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003498 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003499
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003500 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
3501 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003502 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003503 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003504
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003505- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003506 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
3507 module:
3508
3509 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003510
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003511 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
3512 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003513
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003514 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
3515 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003516
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003517 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
3518
3519 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
3520
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003521- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003522 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
3523 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
3524 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003525
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003526New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003527-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003528
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00003529- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
3530 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
3531 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
3532 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
3533 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003534
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003535Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003536-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003537
3538Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003539-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003540
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003541- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
3542 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
3543 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
3544 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00003545 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
3546 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
3547 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
3548 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
3549 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003550
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003551- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00003552 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
3553
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003554
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003555What's New in Python 2.2a2?
3556===========================
3557
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003558*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
3559
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003560Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003561-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003562
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00003563- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
3564 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
3565
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003566- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
3567 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
3568 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003569
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00003570- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
3571 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
3572 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
3573 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003574
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003575- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
3576
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003577- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003578
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003579Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003580-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003581
3582- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00003583 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003584 the module docstring for details.
3585
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003586Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003587-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003588
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003589- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003590 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
3591 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
3592 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003593
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003594- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
3595 Nick Mathewson.
3596
3597Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003598----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003599
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003600- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
3601 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
3602 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
3603 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
3604 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
3605 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
3606 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
3607 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
3608
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00003609- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
3610 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
3611 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
3612 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
3613
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00003614- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
3615 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
3616 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
3617 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
3618 come a long way).
3619
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00003620- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
3621 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
3622 write filters for these warnings).
3623
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00003624- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
3625 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
3626 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
3627 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
3628 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
3629
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00003630- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
3631 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
3632 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
3633 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
3634 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
3635 older distribution.
3636
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003637Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003638-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003639
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003640- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
3641 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003642 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003643
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003644- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
3645 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
3646 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
3647
3648- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
3649
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003650- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
3651
3652- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
3653
3654- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
3655
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003656- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003657
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003658- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
3659
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003660New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003661-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003662
3663C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003664-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003665
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00003666- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
3667 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
3668 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
3669 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
3670 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
3671 against buffer overruns.
3672
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00003673- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00003674 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
3675 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00003676 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
3677 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
3678 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
3679
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003680- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
3681 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
3682 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
3683 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
3684 deprecated.
3685
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00003686Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003687-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00003688
3689- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
3690 relevant is found.
3691
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003692
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00003693What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003694===========================
3695
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003696*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
3697
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003698Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003699----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003700
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00003701- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
3702 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
3703 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
3704 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
3705 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
3706 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
3707 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
3708 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003709 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00003710 repaired.
3711
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00003712- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00003713 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00003714 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
3715 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
3716 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
3717 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
3718 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
3719 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
3720 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
3721 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
3722
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00003723- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
3724 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
3725 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
3726 leading BMO character).
3727
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00003728- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
3729 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
3730 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
3731
3732 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
3733 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
3734 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00003735
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00003736 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
3737 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
3738 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
3739 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
3740 for various simple to use conversions.
3741
3742 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
3743 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
3744
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003745 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3746 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
3747 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
3748 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
3749 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3750 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
3751 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3752 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
3753 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3754 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
3755 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3756 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
3757 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3758 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
3759 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00003760
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003761- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
3762 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
3763 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00003764 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003765 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00003766
3767 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003768 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
3769 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
3770 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
3771 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
3772 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003773 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
3774 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00003775
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003776 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
3777 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
3778 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003779 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003780
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00003781- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
3782 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
3783 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
3784 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
3785 floating arithmetic,
3786
3787 x = 9007199254740992.0
3788 print long(x)
3789
3790 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
3791 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
3792 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
3793 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
3794 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
3795 functions are of good quality).
3796
3797 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
3798 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
3799 algorithms to break.
3800
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00003801- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
3802 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
3803 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
3804 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
3805 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
3806 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
3807 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
3808 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
3809 order.
3810
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00003811- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
3812 operation along the most common code paths.
3813
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00003814- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
3815 the same as dict.has_key(x).
3816
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00003817- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
3818 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
3819 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
3820 {}.update(UserDict())
3821
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00003822- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
3823 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
3824 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
3825 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
3826 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
3827 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
3828 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
3829 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
3830
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003831- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003832 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003833
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00003834 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00003835 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
3836 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00003837 join() method of strings
3838 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00003839 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
3840 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003841 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00003842 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00003843
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00003844- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
3845 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
3846
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00003847- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
3848 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
3849
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00003850- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
3851 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
3852 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
3853 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
3854
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00003855- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
3856 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00003857 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00003858 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
3859 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00003860
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00003861- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
3862
3863
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003864Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003865-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003866
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00003867- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003868 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00003869 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
3870 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
3871
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00003872- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
3873 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
3874
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00003875- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
3876 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
3877 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
3878 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
3879
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00003880- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
3881 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
3882 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
3883
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00003884- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
3885
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00003886- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
3887
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00003888- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
3889 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
3890 that are still imported into string.py).
3891
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003892- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
3893
3894- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
3895 Now it does.
3896
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00003897- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
3898
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00003899- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
3900 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
3901 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
3902 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
3903 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00003904 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
3905 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00003906
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00003907- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
3908 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
3909 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
3910 'help(object)'.
3911
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003912Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003913-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003914
3915- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003916 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003917 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
3918 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
3919
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003920- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00003921 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
3922 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003923
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00003924C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003925-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00003926
3927- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
3928 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003929
3930----
3931
3932**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**