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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10Core and builtins
11-----------------
12
Martin v. Löwis13a1fde2005-01-27 18:56:16 +000013- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +000014 an ferror() call.
15
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000016- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
17 list.sort().
18
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000019- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
20 (2+3) --> (5).
21
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000022- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
23
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +000024- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
25 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000026
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +000027- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
28 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
29 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
30
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000031Extension Modules
32-----------------
33
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +000034- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
35 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +000036
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +000037- stat_float_times is now True.
38
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +000039- array.array objects are now picklable.
40
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +000041- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
42 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
43
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +000044- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
45 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
46 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
47
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +000048- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
49 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000050
51Library
52-------
53
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +000054- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
55
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +000056- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
57 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
58 be exploited in various ways.
59
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +000060- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
61
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +000062- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
63
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +000064- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
65
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000066- Enhancements to the csv module:
67
68 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
69 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
70 PEP 305.
71 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
72 reporting.
73 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
74 dictates.
75 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +000076 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +000077 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +000078 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
79 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +000080 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
81 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +000082 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000083 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
84 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
85 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
86 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
87 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
88 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
89 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
90 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
91 without first creating a dialect class.
92 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
93 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
94 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +000095 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000096 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
97 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +000098 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
99 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
100 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
101 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000102 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
103 This has been fixed.
104
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000105- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
106 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
107 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
108 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
109
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000110- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
111
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000112- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
113 (Bug #951915).
114
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000115- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
116 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
117 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
118 encoding alias table
119
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000120- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
121
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000122- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
123 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
124
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000125- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
126
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000127- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
128
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000129- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
130
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000131- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
132
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000133- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
134
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000135- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
136 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
137 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
138
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000139- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000140 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000141
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000142- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
143 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
144 tokenizer with very long source lines.
145
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000146- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
147 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
148
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000149- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
150 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000151
152Build
153-----
154
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000155- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
156 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
157
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000158- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
159 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
160 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
161 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
162 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
163 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
164 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
165 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
166
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000167- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
168 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
169 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
170 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
171
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000172
173C API
174-----
175
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000176- Removed PyRange_New().
177
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000178
179Tests
180-----
181
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000182- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000183
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000184
185Documentation
186-------------
187
188- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
189 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
190 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
191
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000192Mac
193---
194
195
196
197Tools/Demos
198-----------
199
200
201
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000202What's New in Python 2.4 final?
203===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000204
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000205*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000206
207Core and builtins
208-----------------
209
210- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
211 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
212 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
213
214
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000215What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
216==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000217
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000218*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000219
220Core and builtins
221-----------------
222
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000223- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
224 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
225 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
226
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000227
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000228Library
229-------
230
231- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
232 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
233 raised is re-raised.
234
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000235- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
236 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
237
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000238- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
239 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
240 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
241 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
242 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
243 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
244 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
245 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
246 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
247 by the slice are recomputed now.
248
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000249- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000250
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000251Build
252-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000253
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000254- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
255 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
256 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000257
258C API
259-----
260
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000261- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
262
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000263
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000264What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
265================================
266
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000267*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000268
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000269License
270-------
271
272The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
273is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
274changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
275Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
276intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
277durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
278the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
279License::
280
281 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
282
283says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
284to Python 2.1.1.
285
286The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
287License Version 2.
288
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000289Core and builtins
290-----------------
291
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000292- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
293 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
294 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
295 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
296 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
297 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
298 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
299 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
300 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
301 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
302
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000303- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000304
305Extension Modules
306-----------------
307
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000308- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
309 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
310 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
311 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000312
313Library
314-------
315
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000316- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
317 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
318 returned.
319
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000320- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
321
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000322- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
323 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
324
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000325- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
326
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000327- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
328 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000329
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000330- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
331
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000332- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
333
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000334- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000335 the source code is updated and reloaded.
336
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000337Build
338-----
339
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000340- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000341
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000342What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
343================================
344
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000345*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000346
347Core and builtins
348-----------------
349
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000350- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000351 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
352
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000353- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
354 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
355 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
356 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
357
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000358- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
359 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
360
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000361- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
362 constant.
363
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000364- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
365 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
366 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
367 large), and to anomalies such as
368 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
369 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
370 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
371 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000372
373Extension modules
374-----------------
375
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000376- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
377 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000378 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
379 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
380 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000381
382Library
383-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000384
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000385- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000386 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000387 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
388 --swig-cpp.
389
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000390- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
391 it is set.
392
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000393- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000394
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000395- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
396 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
397 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
398 Closes bug #1039270.
399
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000400- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000401
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000402 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000403 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
404 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
405 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
406 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
407 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
408 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
409 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
410 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
411 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
412 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
413 + Updates to documentation.
414
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000415- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
416 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
417 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
418 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
419
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000420- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000421
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000422- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
423 applications should use the getmember function.
424
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000425- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
426
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000427- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
428 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
429 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
430 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
431 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
432 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
433 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
434 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
435 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
436
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000437- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
438 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000439 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000440
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000441- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
442 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
443 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
444 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
445 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
446 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
447 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
448 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000449
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000450- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
451 the new public features (of which there are many).
452
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000453- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000454 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
455 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
456 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
457 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000458 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000459
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000460- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
461
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000462- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
463 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
464 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
465 options.
466
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000467- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
468 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
469 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
470 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
471 conditions under which non-string values work.
472
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000473Build
474-----
475
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000476- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
477 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
478 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
479
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000480- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
481 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
482 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
483 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
484 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000485
486C API
487-----
488
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000489- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
490 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
491
492- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
493
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000494- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
495 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
496 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
497 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
498 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
499 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
500 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
501 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
502 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
503
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000504- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
505
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000506- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
507 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
508 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000509
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000510Tests
511-----
512
513- test__locale ported to unittest
514
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000515Mac
516---
517
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000518- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
519 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
520 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000521
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000522Tools/Demos
523-----------
524
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000525- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
526 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
527 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
528 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
529 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000530
531
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000532What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
533=================================
534
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000535*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000536
537Core and builtins
538-----------------
539
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000540- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000541 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
542
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000543- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
544 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
545 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
546 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
547 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
548 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
549 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
550 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000551 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
552 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
553 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
554 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
555 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000556
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000557- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
558 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
559 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
560 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
561 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
562
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000563- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
564
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000565- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
566 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
567
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000568- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
569 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
570 modified the list.
571
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000572- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
573 functions is now writable.
574
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000575- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
576 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
577 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
578 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
579
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000580- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
581 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
582 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
583 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
584 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000585
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000586- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
587 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
588
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000589Extension modules
590-----------------
591
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000592- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
593
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000594- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
595 data.
596
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000597- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
598 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
599 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
600 supposed to have been truncated away.
601
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000602- Added socket.socketpair().
603
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000604- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
605 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
606
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000607- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000608 versions of Python, have now been removed.
609
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000610Library
611-------
612
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000613- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000614 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000615
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000616- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
617 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
618
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000619- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
620 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
621
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000622- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
623
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000624- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
625 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000626
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000627- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
628 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
629
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000630- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
631
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000632- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
633
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000634- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
635
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000636- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
637 Percivall.
638
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000639- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
640 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
641
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000642- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
643 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
644 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000645 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000646
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000647- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
648 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
649 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
650 and exponent.
651
652- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
653
654- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
655 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
656 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
657
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000658- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
659 to the readline module.
660
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000661- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000662 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
663 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000664
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000665- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
666 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
667 contains symlinks.
668
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000669- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
670 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
671
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000672- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
673 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
674 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
675
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000676- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
677 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
678 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
679 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
680 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
681 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
682 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
683 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
684 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
685 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
686 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
687 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
688 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
689
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000690- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
691
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000692Tools/Demos
693-----------
694
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000695- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
696 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
697
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000698- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
699
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000700Build
701-----
702
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000703- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
704 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
705 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
706 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
707 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
708 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
709 plans to do so.
710
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000711- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
712 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
713
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000714- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
715 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
716
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000717- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
718 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
719
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000720- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
721 GNU/k*BSD systems.
722
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000723- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
724 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
725
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000726C API
727-----
728
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000729..
730
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000731Documentation
732-------------
733
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000734- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
735 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
736
737- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
738 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
739 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000740
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000741New platforms
742-------------
743
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000744- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
745
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000746Tests
747-----
748
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000749..
750
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000751Windows
752-------
753
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000754- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
755 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
756 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
757 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
758 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
759 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
760 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
761 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
762 the problem.
763
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000764Mac
765---
766
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000767..
768
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000769
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000770What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
771=================================
772
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000773*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000774
775Core and builtins
776-----------------
777
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000778- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
779 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
780 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
781 sensitive code.
782
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000783- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000784 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000785
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000786 @staticmethod
787 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000788
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000789 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000790
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000791- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
792 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
793 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
794 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
795 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
796 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
797 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
798 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
799 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
800 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
801 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
802
803 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
804 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
805 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
806 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
807 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
808 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
809 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
810
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000811- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
812 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
813
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000814- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000815 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000816
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000817- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000818 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000819 which was missing for no apparent reason.
820
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000821- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000822 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
823 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
824
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000825- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
826 types that support garbage collection.
827
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000828- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
829
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000830- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
831 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
832 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
833 Jython.
834
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000835- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
836
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000837- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
838 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
839
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000840- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
841 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
842 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000843
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000844- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
845 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
846 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
847
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000848Extension modules
849-----------------
850
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000851- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
852
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000853Library
854-------
855
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000856- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
857 TIS-620
858
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000859- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
860 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
861 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
862 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
863 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
864 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
865 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
866 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
867 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
868 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
869
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000870- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
871
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000872- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
873 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
874 same as when the argument is omitted).
875 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
876
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000877- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
878
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000879- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
880 schemes are offered.
881
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000882- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
883
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000884- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
885 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
886 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
887
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000888- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
889
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000890- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
891 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
892
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000893- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
894 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
895 when dummy_threading is being used.
896
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000897- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
898 from a tarfile.
899
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000900- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000901 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000902
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000903- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
904 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
905 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
906 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
907
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000908- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
909 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
910
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000911- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
912 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
913 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
914 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
915 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
916 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
917 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
918 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
919 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
920 by some other method in progress).
921
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000922- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
923 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
924 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000925
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000926- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
927
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000928- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
929 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
930 AM Kuchling.
931
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000932- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
933 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
934 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
935
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000936- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
937 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
938 instead of unsigned.
939
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000940- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000941 no longer part of the public API.
942
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000943- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
944 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
945 string methods of the same name).
946
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000947- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000948 SF patch 945642.
949
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000950- doctest unittest integration improvements:
951
952 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
953
954 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
955 DocTestSuites.
956
957- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
958 that provide thread-local data.
959
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000960- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
961 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
962
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000963- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
964
965- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
966 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
967 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
968
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000969- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
970
971 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
972 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
973 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000974
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000975 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
976 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
977 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
978 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
979
980 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
981 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
982
983 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
984 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
985 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
986 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
987
988 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
989 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
990 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
991 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
992 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
993
994 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
995 wrapping help output.
996
997 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
998 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
999 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001000
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001001C API
1002-----
1003
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001004- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1005 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1006 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1007 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1008 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1009 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1010 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1011 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1012 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1013 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1014 its visible semantics have not changed.
1015
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001016- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1017 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1018
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001019Documentation
1020-------------
1021
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001022- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001023
1024 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001025 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001026
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001027 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001028
1029 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1030
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001031- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001032
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001033Tests
1034-----
1035
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001036- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001037 platforms that use the Makefile.
1038
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001039- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1040 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1041 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1042
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001043
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001044What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1045=================================
1046
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001047*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001048
1049Core and builtins
1050-----------------
1051
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001052- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1053 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1054 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1055 objects now (one object instead of three).
1056
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001057- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1058 Windows DLLs.
1059
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001060- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1061 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001062
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001063- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1064 a new .pyc magic.
1065
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001066- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1067 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1068 be there.
1069
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001070- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1071 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1072 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1073
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001074- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1075 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1076 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1077
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001078- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1079
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001080- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1081 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1082 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001083
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001084- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1085 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1086
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001087- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1088
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001089- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001090 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001091
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001092- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1093
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001094- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1095
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001096- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1097 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1098
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001099- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1100 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1101 Fixes bug #858016 .
1102
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001103- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1104 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1105 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1106
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001107- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1108 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1109 improves their performance (about 35%).
1110
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001111- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1112 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1113 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1114
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001115- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1116 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1117 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1118 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1119
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001120- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1121 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
1122 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
1123 length is not known).
1124
1125- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1126 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001127 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1128 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001129 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1130
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001131- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1132 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1133
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001134- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1135 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1136 keyword arguments.
1137
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001138- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1139 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1140 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1141
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001142- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1143 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1144 cases.
1145
1146- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1147 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1148 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1149 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1150 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1151 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1152 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1153 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1154 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1155 a release build.
1156
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001157- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1158 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1159
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001160- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001161 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001162
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001163- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1164 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1165 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1166 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1167 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1168 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1169 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1170 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1171 destroyed.
1172
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001173- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1174 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1175 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1176 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1177 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1178 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1179 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1180 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1181
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001182- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1183 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1184 character other than a space.
1185
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001186- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1187 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1188 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1189 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1190 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1191 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1192 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1193 attributes with the same name.
1194
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001195- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1196 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1197 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1198 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1199 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1200 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1201 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1202 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1203 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1204 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1205 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1206 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1207 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1208 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001209
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001210- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1211 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1212 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1213 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1214 This has been repaired.
1215
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001216- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1217
1218- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1219
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001220- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1221 over a sequence.
1222
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001223- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001224 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001225
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001226- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1227
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001228- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1229 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1230 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1231 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1232 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1233 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1234 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1235 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1236
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001237- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1238 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1239 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1240
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001241- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1242 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1243 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1244 freelist.
1245
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001246- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1247 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1248
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001249- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1250 number.
1251
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001252- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1253 a TypeError exception.
1254
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001255- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1256 820195.
1257
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001258- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1259 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1260 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1261
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001262- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001263 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1264 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001265
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001266- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1267 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1268 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1269
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001270- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1271 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001272 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001273
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001274- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001275 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1276 the first call.
1277
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001278
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001279Extension modules
1280-----------------
1281
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001282- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1283 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1284
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001285- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1286 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1287 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1288 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1289 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1290 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1291 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001292
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001293- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1294
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001295- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1296
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001297- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1298 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1299
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001300- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1301 fewer false positives.
1302
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001303- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1304 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1305
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001306- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001307 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1308
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001309- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001310 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001311 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001312 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1313 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001314
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001315- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1316 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1317 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1318 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1319
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001320- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1321 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1322 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1323 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1324 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1325 #897625.
1326
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001327- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1328 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1329
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001330- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1331 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1332 and pops on either side of the deque.
1333
1334- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1335 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1336
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001337- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1338 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1339 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1340 other functions that expect a function argument.
1341
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001342- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1343
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001344- os.getsid was added.
1345
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001346- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1347 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1348 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1349
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001350- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1351
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001352- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1353
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001354- readline.clear_history was added.
1355
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001356- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1357
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001358- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1359
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001360- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1361
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001362- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1363
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001364- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1365
1366- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1367
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001368- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1369
1370- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1371
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001372- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1373 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1374 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1375
1376- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1377 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1378 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1379 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1380 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1381 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1382 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1383
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001384- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1385 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1386 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1387 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001388
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001389- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001390 iterators from a single iterable.
1391
1392- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1393 of raising a TypeError exception.
1394
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001395- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1396 as parameter.
1397
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001398Library
1399-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001400
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001401- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1402 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1403 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001404
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001405- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1406 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1407 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001408
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001409- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001410
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001411- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1412 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001413
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001414- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1415 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1416
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001417- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1418
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001419- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001420 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001421
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001422- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001423 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001424
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001425- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1426
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001427- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1428 on cygwin and mingw32.
1429
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001430- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1431
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001432- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1433 module.
1434
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001435- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1436 installation scheme for all platforms.
1437
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001438- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001439 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001440
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001441- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1442 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1443 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1444
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001445- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1446 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1447 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1448
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001449- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1450
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001451- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1452
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001453- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1454 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1455
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001456- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1457 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1458 type pattern with the same value exists.
1459
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001460- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1461 when run from the command prompt).
1462
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001463- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1464 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1465
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001466- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1467 default sort).
1468
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001469- Added global runctx function to profile module
1470
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001471- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1472
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001473- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1474
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001475- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1476
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001477- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001478 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1479 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1480 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1481 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1482 accordingly.
1483
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001484- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1485 decoding standards.
1486
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001487- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1488 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1489 called for all requests.
1490
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001491- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1492 they are passed to the compiler.
1493
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001494- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1495 indent, width and depth.
1496
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001497- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1498 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1499
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001500- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1501 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1502
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001503- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1504
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001505- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1506
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001507- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1508
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001509- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1510 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1511
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001512- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001513 for better performance.
1514
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001515- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001516
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001517- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1518 a string).
1519
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001520- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1521
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001522- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1523
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001524- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1525
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001526- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1527
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001528- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1529 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1530 list of fieldnames.
1531
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001532- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1533 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1534
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001535- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1536
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001537- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1538 empty lists.
1539
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001540- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1541 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1542 and shelves.
1543
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001544- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1545 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1546
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001547- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001548 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1549 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001550
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001551- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1552 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001553 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001554
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001555- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001556 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1557 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1558
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001559- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1560 and removed in Py2.4.
1561
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001562- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1563
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001564- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1565
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001566Tools/Demos
1567-----------
1568
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001569- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1570 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1571
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001572- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1573
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001574- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1575 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1576 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1577 destination in situations where both files are given.
1578
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001579- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1580 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1581 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1582 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1583
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001584- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1585
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001586- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1587 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1588 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1589 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1590 now.
1591
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001592- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1593 in effect
1594
1595- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1596 C-c C-h
1597
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001598- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1599 -d option was given.
1600
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001601Build
1602-----
1603
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001604- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1605 build under OS X.
1606
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001607- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1608 --enable-profiling.
1609
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001610- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1611 is configured --with-tsc.
1612
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001613- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1614 on AMD64.
1615
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001616- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1617 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1618
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001619- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1620 removed.
1621
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001622- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1623 supported (see PEP 11).
1624
1625- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1626
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001627- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1628
1629- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1630 (see PEP 11).
1631
1632- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1633 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1634
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001635C API
1636-----
1637
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001638- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1639 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1640 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1641
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001642- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1643 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1644 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1645 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1646
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001647- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1648 generator objects.
1649
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001650- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1651 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001652 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1653 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001654
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001655- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1656 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1657
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001658- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1659 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1660 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1661 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1662 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1663
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001664- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1665 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1666 about 10% faster.
1667
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001668- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1669 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1670
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001671- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1672 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1673 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1674 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1675
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001676Windows
1677-------
1678
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001679- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1680 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1681 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1682 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1683
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001684- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1685 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1686 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1687
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001688
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001689What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1690===============================
1691
1692*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1693
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001694IDLE
1695----
1696
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001697- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1698 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1699 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1700 context-menu actions.
1701
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001702- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1703 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1704 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1705 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1706 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1707 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1708 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1709 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1710 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1711
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001712
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001713What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1714=============================================
1715
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001716*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001717
1718Core and builtins
1719-----------------
1720
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001721- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001722 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001723 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1724
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001725Extension modules
1726-----------------
1727
1728- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1729 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1730 than once. This has been fixed.
1731
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001732- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1733 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1734 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1735 call.
1736
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001737- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1738
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001739Library
1740-------
1741
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001742- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1743 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1744
1745- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1746 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1747 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1748 restored.
1749
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001750IDLE
1751----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001752
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001753- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001754
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001755Build
1756-----
1757
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001758- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1759 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1760
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001761C API
1762-----
1763
1764Windows
1765-------
1766
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001767- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1768 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1769
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001770- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1771
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001772Mac
1773---
1774
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001775- Various fixes to pimp.
1776
1777- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1778
1779- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1780 more problems than it solves.
1781
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001782
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001783What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1784=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001785
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001786*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1787
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001788Core and builtins
1789-----------------
1790
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001791- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1792 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1793
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001794- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1795 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001796 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001797
1798- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1799 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1800 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001801 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001802
1803- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1804 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001805
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001806- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1807 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1808 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1809
1810- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001811 770247.
1812
1813- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001814
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001815Extension modules
1816-----------------
1817
1818- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1819 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1820
1821- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1822
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001823- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1824
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001825- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1826 contained within the _strptime module.
1827
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001828- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1829 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1830
1831- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001832 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1833
1834- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1835 the find_class attribute, if present.
1836
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001837- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001838
1839 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1840 (SF bug 763298).
1841
1842 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001843 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1844 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1845 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001846
1847 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1848
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001849Library
1850-------
1851
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001852- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1853
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001854- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1855 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1856 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1857 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1858 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1859 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1860 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1861 or Tester().
1862
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001863- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1864 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1865 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1866 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1867 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1868 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1869 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1870 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1871 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001872
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001873 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001874
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001875- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1876 weren't before was an oversight.
1877
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001878- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1879 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1880
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001881- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1882 when there are no lines.
1883
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001884- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1885 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1886
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001887- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1888 to child processes.
1889
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001890- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1891
1892- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1893
1894- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1895 xmlrpclib.
1896
1897- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1898 responses.
1899
1900- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1901 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1902
1903- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1904 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1905 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1906
1907- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1908 used as patterns.
1909
1910- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1911 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1912 than Tk 8.3.
1913
1914- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1915
1916- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001917
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001918Tools/Demos
1919-----------
1920
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001921- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1922
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001923- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1924
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001925- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001926
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001927Build
1928-----
1929
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001930- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1931
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001932- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1933
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001934- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1935 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001936
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001937- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1938 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1939 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001940
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001941C API
1942-----
1943
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001944- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1945 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1946
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001947Windows
1948-------
1949
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001950- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1951 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1952 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1953 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1954 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1955 Python exception ::
1956
1957 thread.error: can't start new thread
1958
1959 is raised now.
1960
1961- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1962 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1963 instead of from DLL teardown.
1964
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001965Mac
1966---
1967
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001968- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001969 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001970 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1971 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1972 the executable in the bundle.
1973
1974- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001975
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001976- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1977
1978- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1979 on Panther.
1980
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001981What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1982================================
1983
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001984*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001985
1986Core and builtins
1987-----------------
1988
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001989- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1990 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1991 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1992 with the -i option.
1993
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001994- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1995 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1996
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001997- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1998 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1999
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002000- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2001 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2002 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2003 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2004 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2005 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2006 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2007 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2008 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2009 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2010 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2011 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2012 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002013
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002014- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2015 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2016 embedded in a lambda expression.
2017
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002018- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2019 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2020 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2021 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2022 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2023
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002024- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2025 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2026 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2027
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002028- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2029 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2030
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002031- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2032 It's writable again.
2033
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002034- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2035 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2036 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002037 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002038
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002039- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2040 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2041 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2042
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002043Extension modules
2044-----------------
2045
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002046- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2047 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2048
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002049- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2050 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2051 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2052 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2053
2054- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2055 collection.
2056
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002057- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2058 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2059 unique within a single program run.
2060
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002061- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2062 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2063
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002064- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2065 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2066
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002067- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2068 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002069
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002070- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2071
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002072- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2073 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2074
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002075- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2076 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2077 for many BSD-derived systems.
2078
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002079
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002080Library
2081-------
2082
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002083- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2084 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2085 primary ones:
2086
2087 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2088 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2089 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2090
2091 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2092 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2093 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2094 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2095 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2096 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2097
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002098- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2099 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2100 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2101 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2102 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2103 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2104 argument.
2105
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002106- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2107 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2108 in the archive.
2109
2110- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2111 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2112
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002113- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2114 569574).
2115
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002116- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2117 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2118 no more.
2119
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002120- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2121 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2122 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2123 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2124 code coverage.
2125
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002126- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2127 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2128 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002129 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2130 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002131
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002132- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2133 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2134 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002135 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002136
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002137- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2138
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002139- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2140 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2141 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2142 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2143
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002144- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2145 handling.
2146
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002147- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2148 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2149
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002150- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2151 in socket.py.
2152
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002153- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2154
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002155- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2156 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2157 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2158 opener with proxy support.
2159
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002160- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2161
2162- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2163
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002164Tools/Demos
2165-----------
2166
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002167- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2168
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002169- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2170
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002171- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2172 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002173
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002174- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2175 files.
2176
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002177Build
2178-----
2179
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002180- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002181 different root directory.
2182
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002183C API
2184-----
2185
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002186- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2187 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2188 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2189 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2190 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2191 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2192 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2193 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2194 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2195 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2196
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002197- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2198 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2199 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2200 from Python.
2201
2202
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002203New platforms
2204-------------
2205
2206None this time.
2207
2208Tests
2209-----
2210
2211- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2212 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2213
2214Windows
2215-------
2216
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002217- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2218
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002219- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2220 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2221 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2222 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2223 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2224 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2225 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2226 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2227 that's what it's for.
2228
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002229Mac
2230---
2231
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002232- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2233 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2234 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2235 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002236- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2237 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2238- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002239
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002240SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2241------------------------------------
2242
2243430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2244598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2245622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2246661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2247683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2248697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2249713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2250724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2251727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2252729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2253730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2254731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2255732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2256733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2257735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2258740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2259744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2260745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2261747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2262749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2263751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2264753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2265755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2266757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2267760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2268
2269
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002270What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2271================================
2272
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002273*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002274
2275Core and builtins
2276-----------------
2277
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002278- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2279 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2280
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002281- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2282 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2283 and cannot be strings).
2284
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002285- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2286 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2287 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2288 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2289
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002290- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2291 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2292 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2293 Python itself.
2294
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002295- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2296 the referenced object, if it has one.
2297
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002298- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2299 the thread started at
2300 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2301
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002302- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2303 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2304 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2305 placed on a list index.
2306
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002307- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2308 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2309 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2310 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2311
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002312- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2313 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2314 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2315 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2316 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2317 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2318 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2319
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002320- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2321 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2322 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2323 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2324 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2325
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002326- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2327 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002328
2329- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2330 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2331 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2332 #693195.)
2333
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002334- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2335 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002336
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002337- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002338 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002339 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2340 interpreter executions, would fail.
2341
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002342- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002343 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002344 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002345
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002346Extension modules
2347-----------------
2348
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002349- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2350 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2351 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2352 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2353
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002354- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2355 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2356
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002357- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2358 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2359 and Greg Chapman.)
2360
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002361- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2362 recursively.
2363
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002364- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002365 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2366 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2367 leaks.
2368
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002369- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2370
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002371- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2372 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2373 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2374 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2375 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2376 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2377 #705836.
2378
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002379- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002380 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2381
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002382- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2383 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2384 See SF bug #692416.
2385
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002386- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2387 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2388
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002389- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2390 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2391 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002392
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002393- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002394 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2395 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2396
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002397- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2398 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2399 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2400 timeouts to work properly.
2401
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002402Library
2403-------
2404
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002405- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2406 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2407 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2408 future release.
2409
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002410- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2411 for querying platform dependent features.
2412
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002413- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002414
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002415- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2416 pickle protocol versions.
2417
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002418- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2419 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2420 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2421
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002422- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2423
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002424- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2425 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2426 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2427 modules.
2428
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002429- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2430 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2431 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2432
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002433- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2434 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2435
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002436- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2437 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2438 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2439
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002440- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002441 MS Office extensions.
2442
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002443- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2444 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2445
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002446- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2447 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2448
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002449- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2450 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2451 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2452 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2453 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2454 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2455
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002456- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2457 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2458 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002459
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002460- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2461 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2462 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2463
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002464- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2465
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002466- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2467 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2468 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2469
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002470Tools/Demos
2471-----------
2472
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002473- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2474 See the module docstring for details.
2475
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002476Build
2477-----
2478
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002479- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2480 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002481
2482C API
2483-----
2484
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002485- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2486
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002487- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2488 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2489 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2490
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002491- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2492 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002493
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002494 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2495 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2496 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002497
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002498- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002499 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2500
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002501- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2502 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2503 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002504
2505New platforms
2506-------------
2507
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002508None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002509
2510Tests
2511-----
2512
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002513- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2514 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002515
2516Windows
2517-------
2518
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002519- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2520 function.
2521
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002522- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2523 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002524
2525Mac
2526---
2527
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002528- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2529 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002530
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002531- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2532 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002533
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002534- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2535 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2536 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002537
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002538- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002539 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2540 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002541
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002542- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2543 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002544
2545
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002546What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2547=================================
2548
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002549*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002550
2551Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002552-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002553
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002554- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2555 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2556 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2557
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002558- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2559 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2560 (SF patch #664376.)
2561
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002562- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2563 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2564 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2565 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2566 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2567 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002568 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002569
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002570- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2571 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2572 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2573 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002574 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002575
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002576- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2577 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2578 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2579 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2580 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2581 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2582 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2583 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2584 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2585 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2586 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2587
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002588- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2589 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2590 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2591 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2592 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2593 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2594
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002595- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2596 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2597
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002598- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2599 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2600 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2601 case.)
2602
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002603- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2604 passed as unicode strings.
2605
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002606- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2607 See SF bug #683467.
2608
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002609- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2610 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2611
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002612- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2613
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002614- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2615
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002616- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2617 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2618 arguments.
2619
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002620- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2621 See SF bug #667147.
2622
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002623- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002624 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002625 See SF bug #676155.
2626
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002627- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002628 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002629 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2630 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2631 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2632 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2633 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2634 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002635
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002636Extension modules
2637-----------------
2638
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002639- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2640 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2641 tp_as_number pointer.
2642
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002643- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2644 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2645 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2646 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2647 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2648
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002649- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2650
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002651- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2652
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002653- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002654 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002655 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2656 patch #678531.)
2657
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002658- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2659 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2660
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002661- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2662 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2663
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002664- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2665
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002666- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2667 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2668 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2669
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002670- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2671
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002672- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2673 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2674
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002675- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002676
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002677- datetime changes:
2678
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002679 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2680
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002681 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2682 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2683 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2684 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2685 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2686 now.
2687
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002688 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002689 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2690 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002691
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002692 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002693 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002694 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2695 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2696 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2697 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002698
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002699 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2700 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2701 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002702 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2703
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002704 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2705 by a later example coded by Guido.
2706
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002707 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002708 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2709 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2710 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002711 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2712 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2713
2714 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2715 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2716 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2717 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2718 tzinfo subclass instance.
2719
2720 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2721 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2722 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2723 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2724 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2725 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2726 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2727 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002728
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002729 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2730 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2731 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2732 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2733 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002734 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2735
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002736 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002737
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002738 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2739 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2740 as a naive datetime object.
2741
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002742 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2743 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2744 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2745
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002746 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2747 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2748 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2749 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2750 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2751 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2752 comparison.
2753
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002754 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2755 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2756 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2757 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002758 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002759
2760 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002761
2762 and ::
2763
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002764 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2765
2766 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2767 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2768 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2769 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2770
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002771 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2772 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2773 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2774 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2775 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2776
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002777 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2778 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002779 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2780 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002781
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002782Library
2783-------
2784
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002785- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2786 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2787
2788- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2789 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2790 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2791 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2792 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2793 See PEP 307 for details.
2794
2795- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2796 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2797
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002798- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2799 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002800 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002801 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2802 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002803 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002804
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002805- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2806 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2807
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002808- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2809 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2810 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2811
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002812- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2813
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002814- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2815 exception.
2816
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002817- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2818 class.
2819
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002820- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2821 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2822 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2823
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002824- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2825 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2826
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002827- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002828 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2829 See SF bug #659228.
2830
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002831- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2832 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2833 See SF patch #651082.
2834
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002835- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002836
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002837- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2838 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2839
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002840- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002841 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002842
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002843- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2844 DOS paths from other platforms.
2845
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002846Tools/Demos
2847-----------
2848
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002849- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2850 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2851 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2852 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2853 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2854 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2855 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2856 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2857 example:
2858
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002859 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2860 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002861
2862 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2863
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002864
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002865Build
2866-----
2867
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002868- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2869 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2870 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002871 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2872
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002873 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2874
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002875- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2876 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2877 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2878 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2879 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2880 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2881 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2882 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2883 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2884
2885- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2886 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2887 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2888 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2889
2890- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2891 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2892
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002893C API
2894-----
2895
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002896- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2897 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002898
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002899- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2900 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2901 tp_as_number pointer.
2902
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002903- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2904 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2905 (SF #681367)
2906
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002907- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2908 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2909 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2910 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002911
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002912Tests
2913-----
2914
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002915- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002916 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2917 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2918 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2919 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2920 pydoc.)
2921
2922- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2923
2924- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002925
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002926Windows
2927-------
2928
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002929- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2930 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2931 time).
2932
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002933- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2934 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2935
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002936- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2937 release without strong cryptography.
2938
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002939- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002940 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002941
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002942- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2943 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2944
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002945Mac
2946---
2947
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002948- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2949 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002950
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002951- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2952 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2953 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002954
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002955- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2956 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002957
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002958- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2959 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2960 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2961 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002962
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002963- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002964 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2965 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2966 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002967
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002968
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002969What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002970=================================
2971
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002972*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002973
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002974Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002975--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002976
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002977- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2978
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002979- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2980 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002981 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002982 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002983 a different meaning than before.
2984
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002985- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002986 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002987 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002988
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002989- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002990 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002991 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002992
2993- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2994 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2995 and deallocation.
2996
2997- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2998 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2999
3000- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3001 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3002 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3003 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3004 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3005
3006- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3007 now detected by the garbage collector.
3008
3009- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3010 [SF bug 519621]
3011
3012- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3013 identifier.
3014
3015- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3016 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3017 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3018 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3019 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3020 [SF bug 563060]
3021
3022- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3023 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3024 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3025 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3026 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3027
3028- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3029 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3030 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3031
3032- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3033
3034- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3035 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3036 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3037 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3038 state of the slots would be lost.)
3039
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003040Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003041-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003042
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003043- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003044 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3045 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3046 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3047 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003048 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3049 Jython 2.1.
3050
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003051- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003052 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003053 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3054 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3055 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3056 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3057 these, see PEP 302.
3058
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003059- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3060 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3061 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3062
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003063- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3064 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3065 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3066
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003067- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3068 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3069 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3070
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003071- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3072 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3073 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3074 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3075 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3076 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3077 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3078 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3079 releases or implementations.
3080
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003081- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003082 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3083 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003084
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003085- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3086 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3087
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003088- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3089 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3090 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3091
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003092- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3093 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3094
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003095- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3096 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003097 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3098 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003099
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003100- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3101 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3102 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3103 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3104 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3105
3106 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3107 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3108 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3109 pattern.
3110
3111 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3112 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3113 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3114 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3115
3116 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3117 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3118 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3119 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3120 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3121 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3122
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003123- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3124 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3125 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3126 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3127 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3128 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3129 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3130 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003131
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003132- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3133 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3134 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3135 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3136 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003137 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3138 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3139 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3140 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3141 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3142 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3143 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003144
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003145- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3146 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3147
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003148- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3149 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3150 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3151 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3152 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3153 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3154 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3155 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3156 to Zack Weinberg!
3157
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003158- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3159 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3160 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3161 type. This has been fixed now.
3162
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003163- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3164 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3165 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3166
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003167- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3168 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3169 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3170 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3171 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3172 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3173 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3174 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003175 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003176
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003177- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3178 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3179 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003180
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003181- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3182 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3183 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3184 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3185 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3186 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3187 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3188 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003189 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003190 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3191 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3192
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003193- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3194 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3195 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3196 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3197 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3198 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3199 this.)
3200
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003201- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3202 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003203 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003204 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003205 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3206 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003207 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3208 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003209
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003210- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3211 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3212 currently running.
3213
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003214- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3215 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3216 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3217 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3218
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003219- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3220 as directory names.
3221
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003222- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3223 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3224
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003225- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3226 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3227
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003228- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003229 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3230 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003231
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003232- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3233 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3234 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3235 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3236 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3237
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003238- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3239 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3240 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3241 removed.
3242
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003243- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3244 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3245 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3246
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003247- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3248 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3249 to __debug__.
3250
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003251- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3252 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3253 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3254
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003255- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3256 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3257 deprecated now.
3258
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003259- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3260 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3261 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003262
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003263- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3264 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3265 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3266 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3267 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003268
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003269- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3270 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3271
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003272- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3273 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3274 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003275 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003276 is backward compatible.
3277
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003278- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3279 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3280 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3281 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3282 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3283
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003284- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3285 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3286 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3287 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3288 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3289 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003290
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003291- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3292 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3293
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003294- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3295 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3296
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003297- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3298 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3299 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3300 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3301 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3302
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003303- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3304 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3305 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3306
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003307- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003308 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3309
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003310- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3311 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3312 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003313
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003314- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3315 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3316
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003317- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3318 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3319 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3320
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003321- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3322
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003323Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003324-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003325
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003326- Added three operators to the operator module:
3327 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3328 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3329 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3330
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003331- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3332
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003333- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3334 archives.
3335
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003336- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3337 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3338 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3339
3340 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3341
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003342- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3343 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3344 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003345 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003346
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003347- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3348 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3349 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3350 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003351 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3352 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3353 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3354 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003355
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003356- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3357 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003358
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003359- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3360
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003361- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3362 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3363
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003364- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3365 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3366 supported.
3367
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003368- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3369
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003370- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3371 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003372
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003373- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3374 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3375
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003376- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3377
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003378- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3379 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3380
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003381- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3382 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3383 functions but callable type objects.
3384
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003385- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003386 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003387 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003388
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003389- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3390 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003391
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003392- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3393 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003394
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003395- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3396 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3397 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3398 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3399
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003400- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3401 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003402
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003403- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3404 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3405 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3406 and __imul__.
3407
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003408- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003409 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3410 is called.
3411
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003412- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3413 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3414 interpreter was compiled.
3415
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003416- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3417 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3418 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003419 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003420 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3421 1, not 2.
3422
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003423- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3424 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3425 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3426 limit.
3427
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003428- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3429 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3430 bug #623464.
3431
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003432- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3433 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3434 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3435 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3436
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003437Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003438-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003439
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003440- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3441
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003442- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3443 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3444 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3445 with Python 2.3a2.
3446
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003447- os.path exposes getctime.
3448
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003449- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003450 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003451 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003452 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003453 unit tests of floating point results.
3454
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003455- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3456 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3457 has been increased.
3458
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003459- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3460 executed.
3461
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003462- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3463 postinstallation script.
3464
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003465- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3466 test the current module.
3467
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003468- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003469 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3470 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3471 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3472 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3473
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003474- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003475 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003476 Ward's Optik package.
3477
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003478- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3479 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3480 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3481 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3482
3483- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3484 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003485 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003486
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003487- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3488 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3489 shelf are binary pickles.
3490
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003491- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3492 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3493
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003494- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3495 modules are iterators now.
3496
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003497- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3498 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3499 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3500 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3501 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3502 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003503
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003504- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3505 with their entity value.
3506
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003507- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3508
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003509- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3510 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003511
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003512- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3513 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003514 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003515
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003516- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3517 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3518 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3519 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3520 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3521 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3522 main():
3523
3524 import locale
3525 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3526
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003527- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3528 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3529
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003530- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3531 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3532 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3533 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3534 to the new standard.
3535
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003536- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3537 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3538 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3539 an extension to the database.
3540
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003541- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3542 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3543 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3544 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003545 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003546
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003547- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003548 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003549
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003550- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3551 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3552 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3553 bounded integers.
3554
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003555- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3556 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3557 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3558 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3559 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3560 in existence.
3561
3562 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3563 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3564 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3565 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3566 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3567 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3568
3569 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3570 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3571 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3572 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3573
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003574- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3575 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3576 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3577
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003578- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3579
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003580- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3581 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3582 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3583 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3584
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003585- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3586 argument.
3587
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003588- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3589 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3590 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3591 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3592 [SF patch 560794].
3593
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003594- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3595 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3596 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003597 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3598 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3599 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003600
3601- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3602 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003603
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003604- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3605 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3606 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3607 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003608
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003609- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3610 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3611 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3612 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3613 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3614
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003615- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003616
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003617- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3618
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003619- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3620 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3621 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3622 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3623 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3624 identical to None.
3625
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003626- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3627 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3628 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3629 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3630 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3631 results now.
3632
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003633- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3634 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3635
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003636- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3637 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3638 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3639 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3640 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3641 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3642 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3643 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3644
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003645- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3646
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003647- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3648 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3649
3650- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3651 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3652 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3653 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3654 and other systems.
3655
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003656- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3657 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3658 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3659 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 +00003660 work well with these.
3661
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003662- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3663
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003664- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003665 connections.
3666
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003667- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3668 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3669 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3670
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003671- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3672 sets
3673
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003674- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3675 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3676 name.
3677
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003678- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3679 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3680 passed in.
3681
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003682- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003683 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003684 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3685 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003686
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003687- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3688
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003689- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3690
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003691- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3692 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3693 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3694
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003695- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3696 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3697 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3698 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003699 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003700
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003701- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003702 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003703 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003704
3705- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3706 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3707 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3708
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003709- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003710 the value of its expression argument.
3711
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003712- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3713 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3714 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3715
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003716- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3717 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3718 skipstone browser was included.
3719
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003720- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3721 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3722
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003723Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003724-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003725
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003726- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3727 names in addition to accepting file names.
3728
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003729- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3730 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3731 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3732 still used and useful.)
3733
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003734- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3735 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3736 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3737 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003738
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003739- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3740 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3741 the generated binary.
3742
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003743Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003744-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003745
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003746- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3747
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003748- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3749 except in the hands of experts.
3750
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003751- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003752 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3753 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3754 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003755
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003756- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3757 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3758 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3759 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3760 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3761 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3762 builds.
3763
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003764- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3765 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3766 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3767 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3768 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3769 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3770 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3771 new type.
3772
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003773- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003774
3775 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3776 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3777 positive infinities.
3778
3779 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3780 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3781 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3782 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3783 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3784 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3785 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3786
3787 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3788
3789 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3790
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003791- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3792 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3793 size of the executable.
3794
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003795- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3796 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3797 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3798 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003799
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003800- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3801
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003802- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3803 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3804 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003805
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003806- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3807 well as Unix.
3808
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003809- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3810 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3811 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3812 modules in the README file for details.
3813
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003814C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003815-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003816
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003817- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3818 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003819 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003820 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003821 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003822
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003823- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3824 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3825 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3826 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3827 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3828 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003829 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003830 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3831 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3832 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3833 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3834 aligned.)
3835
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003836- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3837 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3838 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3839
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003840- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3841 level.
3842
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003843- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3844 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3845 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3846 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3847 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3848
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003849- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3850 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3851 code.
3852
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003853- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3854 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3855 adjusting for negative indices.
3856
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003857- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3858 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3859 object.
3860
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003861- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3862 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3863 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3864
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003865- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3866 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003867
3868- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3869
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003870- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3871 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3872 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3873 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3874
3875- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3876
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003877- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003878
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003879- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003880 without going through the buffer API.
3881
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003882- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003883
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003884- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3885 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3886 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3887 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3888
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003889- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3890 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3891
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003892- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003893 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3894
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003895New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003896-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003897
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003898- OpenVMS is now supported.
3899
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003900- AtheOS is now supported.
3901
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003902- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3903
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003904- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3905
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003906Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003907-----
3908
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003909- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3910 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3911 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003912
3913Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003914-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003915
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003916- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3917 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3918 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3919 bugs.
3920 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003921 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003922 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3923 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003924 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003925
3926- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003927 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003928
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003929- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3930 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3931
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003932- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3933 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003934 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003935 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3936
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003937- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3938 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3939 use files" uninstall option).
3940
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003941- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3942
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003943- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3944 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3945
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003946- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3947 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3948 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3949
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003950- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3951 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3952 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3953 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3954 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003955 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3956 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3957 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003958
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003959- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003960 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003961 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3962 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3963 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3964 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3965 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3966 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3967 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3968 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3969 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3970 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3971 work around.
3972
3973- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3974 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3975 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3976 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3977 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3978 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3979 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3980 specified with O_CREAT too).
3981
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003982Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003983----
3984
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003985- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003986
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003987- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3988 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3989 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3990
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003991- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3992 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3993 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3994
3995- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3996 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3997 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3998 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3999 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4000 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4001 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4002 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004003
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004004- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4005 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4006 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004007
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004008- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4009 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4010 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4011 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4012 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004013
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004014- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4015 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4016 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004017
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004018- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4019 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004020
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004021- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4022 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4023 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4024 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4025 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004026
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004027- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4028 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4029 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4030
4031- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4032 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4033 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004034
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004035- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4036 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4037 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4038 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004039 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004040
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004041- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4042 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004043
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004044- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4045 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004046
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004047- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004048 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004049 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4050 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004051
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004052
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004053What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004054===============================
4055
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004056*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4057
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004058Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004059--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004060
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004061- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4062 with a custom metaclass.
4063
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004064Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004065-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004066
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004067- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4068 are proxies.
4069
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004070Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004071-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004072
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004073- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4074 very short strings.
4075
4076- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4077 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4078 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4079 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4080 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4081
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004082Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004083-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004084
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004085- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4086 close or delete time).
4087
4088- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4089 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4090
4091- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4092
4093- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004094 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004095
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004096Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004097-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004098
4099Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004100-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004101
4102C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004103-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004104
4105New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004106-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004107
4108Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004109-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004110
4111Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004112-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004113
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004114- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4115
4116- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4117 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4118
4119- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4120 deleted at process exit time.
4121
4122- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4123 in backslash.
4124
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004125Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004126----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004127
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004128- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4129 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4130 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4131
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004132
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004133What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004134===========================
4135
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004136*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4137
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004138Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004139--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004140
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004141- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4142 been extensively updated. See
4143
4144 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4145
4146 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4147
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004148- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4149 deleted!
4150
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004151- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4152 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4153 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4154 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4155 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4156
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004157- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4158
4159 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4160 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4161
4162 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4163 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4164 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4165 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4166 supported anyway.
4167
4168 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4169 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4170
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004171- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4172 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4173 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4174 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4175 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004176
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004177- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4178 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4179 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4180
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004181Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004182-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004183
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004184- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4185 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4186 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4187 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4188 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4189 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004190 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4191 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4192 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4193 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004194
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004195- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4196 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4197 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4198
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004199Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004200-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004201
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004202- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4203
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004204Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004205-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004206
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004207- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4208 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4209 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4210 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4211 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4212 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4213
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004214- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4215
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004216- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4217
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004218- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4219
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004220- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4221 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4222 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4223
4224- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4225
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004226Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004227-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004228
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004229- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4230 off a search on Google.
4231
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004232Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004233-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004234
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004235- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4236 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4237 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4238 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4239 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4240 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4241 other platforms should do likewise.
4242
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004243- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4244 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4245 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4246
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004247C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004248-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004249
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004250- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4251 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4252 producing key-value pairs.
4253
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004254- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004255 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004256 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4257 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4258 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4259 previously went unchallenged.
4260
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004261New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004262-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004263
4264Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004265-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004266
4267Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004268-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004269
4270Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004271----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004272
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004273- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4274 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004275
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004276- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4277 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4278 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4279 home.
4280
4281
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004282What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004283===========================
4284
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004285*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4286
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004287Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004288--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004289
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004290- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4291 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004292
4293 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004294 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004295
4296 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4297 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004298 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004299 This needs to be documented.
4300
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004301- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4302 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4303
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004304- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4305 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4306 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4307
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004308- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4309 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4310
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004311- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4312 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4313 class forbids it).
4314
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004315- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4316 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4317 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4318
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004319- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4320
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004321Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004322-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004323
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004324- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4325 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004326 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004327
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004328- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4329 (like 1 + '').
4330
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004331Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004332-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004333
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004334- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4335 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4336 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4337 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004338 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004339 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4340
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004341- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4342 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4343 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4344 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4345
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004346- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4347 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004348 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4349 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4350 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004351
4352- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4353 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004354
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004355- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4356 bytes on its input.
4357
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004358Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004359-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004360
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004361- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004362 convenience function.
4363
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004364- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4365 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4366 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004367 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4368 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4369 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4370 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4371 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4372 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004373
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004374- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4375 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4376 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4377 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4378
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004379- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4380 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4381 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4382
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004383- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4384 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4385 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4386 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4387
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004388- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4389 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004390 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004391 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4392 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4393 new -l and -e options.
4394
4395- statcache is now deprecated.
4396
4397- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4398 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004399 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004400 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4401 time properly taken into account.
4402
4403- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4404 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4405 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4406 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4407
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004408Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004409-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004410
4411Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004412-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004413
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004414- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4415 is built with libdb3 if available.
4416
4417- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4418
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004419C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004420-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004421
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004422- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4423 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4424 PySequence_Size().
4425
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004426- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4427
4428- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4429 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4430 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4431
4432- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4433 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4434
4435- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4436 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4437
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004438New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004439-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004440
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004441- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4442 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4443
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004444- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4445 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4446
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004447- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4448
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004449Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004450-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004451
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004452- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4453 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4454
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004455Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004456-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004457
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004458Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004459----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004460
4461- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4462 removed completely in the next release.
4463
4464- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4465 OSX.
4466
4467- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4468 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4469
4470- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4471
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004472
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004473What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004474===========================
4475
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004476*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4477
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004478Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004479--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004480
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004481- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004482 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004483 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004484 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4485 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004486 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4487 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004488 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4489 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004490
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004491- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4492 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4493
4494- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4495 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4496
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004497Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004498-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004499
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004500- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4501 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4502 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4503 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4504 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4505 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4506 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4507 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4508
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004509- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4510 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4511 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4512 example).
4513
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004514- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004515 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004516 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004517 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004518
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004519- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4520 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4521 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004522 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004523
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004524- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4525 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4526 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4527 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4528 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4529 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4530
4531 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4532
4533 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4534
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004535Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004536-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004537
4538- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4539
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004540- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4541
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004542- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4543 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004544
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004545- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4546 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4547 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4548 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4549 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4550 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004551 attributes.
4552
4553- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4554 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4555 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004556
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004557- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4558 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4559 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004560
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004561- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4562 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4563 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004564 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4565 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4566
4567- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4568 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004569
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004570Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004571-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004572
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004573- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4574 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4575
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004576- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4577 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4578 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4579 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4580
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004581- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4582 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4583 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4584 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4585
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004586 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4587 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4588 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4589 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4590 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4591 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4592 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4593 without losing information).
4594
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004595- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004596 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4597 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4598 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4599 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4600 module).
4601
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004602 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004603 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4604 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4605 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4606 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004607
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004608- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004609 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4610 encoding.
4611
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004612- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4613 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4614
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004615- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004616 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4617
4618- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4619 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4620 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4621 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4622
4623- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4624
4625- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4626 ON, and OFF.
4627
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004628- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4629 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4630
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004631Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004632-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004633
4634- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4635 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4636 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004637
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004638- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4639 been added: -X and -E.
4640
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004641Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004642-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004643
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004644- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4645 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4646
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004647C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004648-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004649
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004650- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4651 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4652 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4653 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4654 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4655
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004656- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4657 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4658 as long) arguments.
4659
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004660- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4661 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4662 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4663 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4664 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4665 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4666
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004667- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4668 input.
4669
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004670New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004671-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004672
4673Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004674-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004675
4676Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004677-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004678
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004679- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4680 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4681 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4682
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004683- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4684 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4685 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004686 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004687
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004688 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4689 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4690 import signal
4691 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004692
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004693 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004694 while 1:
4695 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004696 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004697 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4698 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4699 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4700 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004701
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004702
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004703What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4704===========================
4705
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004706*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4707
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004708Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004709--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004710
4711- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4712 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4713 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4714
4715- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4716 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4717 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4718 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4719 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4720 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4721 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004722
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004723- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004724 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004725 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4726 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4727 associate a docstring with a property.
4728
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004729- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4730 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4731 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4732 other built-in object types.
4733
4734- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4735 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4736 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4737 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4738 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4739
4740- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4741 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4742
4743- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4744 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004745 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004746 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4747 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4748 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4749 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4750 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4751
4752- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4753 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4754 class.
4755
4756- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4757 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4758 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4759 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4760
4761- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4762 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4763 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4764 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4765
4766- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4767 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4768
4769- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4770 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4771 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4772 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4773 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004774 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004775 with the same value as s.
4776
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004777- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4778
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004779Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004780----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004781
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004782- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4783
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004784- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4785 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4786 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4787 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4788 objects.
4789
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004790- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4791 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004792 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4793 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4794
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004795- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4796 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4797 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4798
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004799Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004800-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004801
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004802- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4803 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4804 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4805 by the instances.
4806
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004807- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4808 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4809 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4810
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004811- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4812 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4813 before the entire comparison is complete.
4814
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004815- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4816 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4817 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4818
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004819- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4820 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4821 getwriter().
4822
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004823- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4824 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4825
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004826- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004827 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4828 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4829
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004830- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4831 iterable object.
4832
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004833- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4834 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004835
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004836- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4837 authentication.
4838
4839- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4840 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004841
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004842- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004843 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4844 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4845 a sample driver.)
4846
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004847Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004848-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004849
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004850- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4851 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4852 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4853 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4854 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4855 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4856 kernel has large file support.
4857
4858- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4859 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4860 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4861 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4862 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4863
4864- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4865 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4866 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4867
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004868C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004869-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004870
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004871- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4872 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4873
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004874New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004875-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004876
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004877- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4878 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4879
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004880Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004881-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004882
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004883- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4884 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4885 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4886 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4887 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4888
4889- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4890 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4891 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4892 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4893
4894- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4895 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4896
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004897Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004898-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004899
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004900- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004901 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4902 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004903
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004904
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004905What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4906===========================
4907
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004908*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4909
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004910Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004911----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004912
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004913- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4914 big to represent as a C double.
4915
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004916- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4917 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4918 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4919 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4920 restriction).
4921
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004922- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4923 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4924 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4925 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4926 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4927
4928 >>> dir([])
4929 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4930 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4931 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4932 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4933 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4934 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4935 'reverse', 'sort']
4936
4937 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4938
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004939- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004940 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4941 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4942 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4943 OverflowError exception.
4944
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004945- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004946 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004947 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4948 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4949 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4950 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4951 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004952 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004953 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4954 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4955
4956 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4957 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4958 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4959 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004960
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004961- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004962 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4963 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4964 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4965 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4966 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4967 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4968 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4969 once it is created.
4970
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004971- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4972 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4973 (key, value) pairs.
4974
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004975- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004976 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4977 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4978
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004979- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4980 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4981 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4982 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4983 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004984
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004985- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004986 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4987 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4988
4989 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4990
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004991- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004992 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4993
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004994Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004995-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004996
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004997- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004998 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4999 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005000
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005001- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5002 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5003 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5004 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5005 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5006 in this area anymore).
5007
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005008- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5009 threading.Timer.
5010
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005011- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5012 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5013
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005014- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005015 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5016
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005017- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005018 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5019 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5020 converted to Python longs.
5021
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005022- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005023 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5024
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005025- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5026 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5027 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5028
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005029Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005030-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005031
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005032- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5033 division operators as per PEP 238.
5034
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005035Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005036-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005037
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005038- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5039 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5040 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5041 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5042
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005043C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005044-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005045
5046- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005047
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005048- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5049 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005050 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005051
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005052 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5053 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005054 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005055 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005056
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005057- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005058 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5059 module:
5060
5061 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005062
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005063 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5064 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005065
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005066 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5067 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005068
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005069 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5070
5071 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5072
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005073- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005074 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5075 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5076 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005077
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005078New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005079-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005080
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005081- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5082 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5083 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5084 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5085 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005086
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005087Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005088-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005089
5090Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005091-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005092
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005093- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5094 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5095 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5096 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005097 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5098 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5099 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5100 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5101 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005102
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005103- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005104 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5105
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005106
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005107What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5108===========================
5109
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005110*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5111
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005112Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005113-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005114
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005115- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5116 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5117
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005118- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5119 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5120 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005121
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005122- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5123 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5124 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5125 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005126
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005127- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5128
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005129- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005130
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005131Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005132-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005133
5134- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005135 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005136 the module docstring for details.
5137
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005138Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005139-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005140
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005141- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005142 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5143 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5144 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005145
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005146- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5147 Nick Mathewson.
5148
5149Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005150----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005151
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005152- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5153 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5154 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5155 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5156 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5157 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5158 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5159 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5160
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005161- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5162 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5163 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5164 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5165
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005166- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5167 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5168 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5169 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5170 come a long way).
5171
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005172- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5173 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5174 write filters for these warnings).
5175
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005176- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5177 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5178 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5179 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5180 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5181
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005182- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5183 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5184 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5185 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5186 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5187 older distribution.
5188
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005189Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005190-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005191
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005192- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5193 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005194 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005195
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005196- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5197 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5198 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5199
5200- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5201
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005202- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5203
5204- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5205
5206- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5207
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005208- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005209
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005210- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5211
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005212New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005213-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005214
5215C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005216-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005217
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005218- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5219 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5220 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5221 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5222 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5223 against buffer overruns.
5224
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005225- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005226 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5227 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005228 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5229 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5230 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5231
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005232- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5233 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5234 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5235 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5236 deprecated.
5237
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005238Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005239-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005240
5241- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5242 relevant is found.
5243
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005244
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005245What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005246===========================
5247
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005248*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5249
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005250Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005251----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005252
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005253- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5254 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5255 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5256 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5257 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5258 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5259 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5260 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005261 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005262 repaired.
5263
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005264- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005265 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005266 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5267 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5268 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5269 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5270 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5271 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5272 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5273 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5274
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005275- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5276 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5277 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5278 leading BMO character).
5279
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005280- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5281 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5282 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5283
5284 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5285 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5286 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005287
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005288 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5289 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5290 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5291 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5292 for various simple to use conversions.
5293
5294 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5295 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5296
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005297 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5298 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5299 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5300 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5301 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5302 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5303 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5304 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5305 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5306 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5307 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5308 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5309 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5310 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5311 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005312
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005313- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5314 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5315 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005316 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005317 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005318
5319 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005320 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5321 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5322 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5323 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5324 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005325 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5326 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005327
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005328 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5329 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5330 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005331 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005332
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005333- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5334 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5335 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5336 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5337 floating arithmetic,
5338
5339 x = 9007199254740992.0
5340 print long(x)
5341
5342 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5343 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5344 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5345 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5346 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5347 functions are of good quality).
5348
5349 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5350 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5351 algorithms to break.
5352
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005353- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5354 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5355 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5356 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5357 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5358 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5359 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5360 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5361 order.
5362
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005363- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5364 operation along the most common code paths.
5365
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005366- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5367 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5368
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005369- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5370 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5371 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5372 {}.update(UserDict())
5373
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005374- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5375 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5376 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5377 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5378 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5379 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5380 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5381 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5382
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005383- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005384 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005385
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005386 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005387 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5388 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005389 join() method of strings
5390 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005391 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5392 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005393 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005394 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005395
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005396- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5397 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5398
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005399- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5400 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5401
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005402- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5403 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5404 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5405 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5406
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005407- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5408 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005409 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005410 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5411 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005412
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005413- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5414
5415
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005416Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005417-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005418
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005419- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005420 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005421 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5422 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5423
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005424- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5425 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5426
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005427- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5428 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5429 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5430 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5431
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005432- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5433 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5434 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5435
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005436- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5437
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005438- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5439
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005440- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5441 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5442 that are still imported into string.py).
5443
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005444- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5445
5446- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5447 Now it does.
5448
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005449- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5450
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005451- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5452 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5453 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5454 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5455 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005456 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5457 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005458
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005459- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5460 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5461 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5462 'help(object)'.
5463
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005464Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005465-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005466
5467- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005468 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005469 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5470 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5471
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005472- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005473 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5474 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005475
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005476C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005477-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005478
5479- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5480 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005481
5482----
5483
5484**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**