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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
8================================
9
10*Release date: XXXX-XX-XX*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +000015- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
16 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
17 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
18 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
19
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +000020- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
21 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
22
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +000023- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
24 constant.
25
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +000026- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
27 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
28 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
29 large), and to anomalies such as
30 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
31 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
32 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
33 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +000034
35Extension modules
36-----------------
37
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +000038- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
39 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +000040 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
41 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
42 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +000043
44Library
45-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +000046
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +000047- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +000048
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +000049- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
50 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
51 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
52 Closes bug #1039270.
53
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +000054- Updates for the email package:
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +000055 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +000056 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
57 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
58 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
59 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
60 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
61 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
62 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
63 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
64 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
65 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
66 + Updates to documentation.
67
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +000068- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
69 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
70 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
71 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
72
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +000073- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +000074
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +000075- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
76 applications should use the getmember function.
77
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +000078- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
79
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +000080- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
81 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
82 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
83 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
84 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
85 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
86 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
87 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
88 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
89
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +000090- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
91 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +000092 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +000093
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +000094- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
95 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
96 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
97 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
98 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
99 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
100 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
101 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000102
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000103- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
104 the new public features (of which there are many).
105
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000106- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000107 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
108 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
109 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
110 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000111 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000112
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000113- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
114
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000115- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
116 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
117 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
118 options.
119
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000120- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
121 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
122 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
123 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
124 conditions under which non-string values work.
125
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000126Build
127-----
128
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000129- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
130 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
131 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
132
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000133- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
134 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
135 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
136 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
137 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000138
139C API
140-----
141
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000142- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
143 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
144
145- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
146
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000147- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
148 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
149 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
150 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
151 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
152 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
153 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
154 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
155 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
156
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000157- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
158
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000159- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
160 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
161 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000162
163Documentation
164-------------
165
166...
167
168Tests
169-----
170
171- test__locale ported to unittest
172
173Windows
174-------
175
176...
177
178Mac
179---
180
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000181- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
182 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
183 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000184
185New platforms
186-------------
187
188...
189
190Tools/Demos
191-----------
192
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000193- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
194 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
195 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
196 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
197 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000198
199
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000200What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
201=================================
202
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000203*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000204
205Core and builtins
206-----------------
207
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000208- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000209 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
210
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000211- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
212 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
213 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
214 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
215 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
216 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
217 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
218 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000219 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
220 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
221 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
222 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
223 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000224
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000225- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
226 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
227 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
228 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
229 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
230
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000231- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
232
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000233- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
234 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
235
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000236- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
237 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
238 modified the list.
239
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000240- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
241 functions is now writable.
242
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000243- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
244 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
245 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
246 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
247
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000248- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
249 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
250 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
251 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
252 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000253
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000254- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
255 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
256
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000257Extension modules
258-----------------
259
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000260- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
261
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000262- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
263 data.
264
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000265- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
266 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
267 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
268 supposed to have been truncated away.
269
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000270- Added socket.socketpair().
271
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000272- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
273 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
274
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000275- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000276 versions of Python, have now been removed.
277
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000278Library
279-------
280
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000281- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000282 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000283
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000284- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
285 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
286
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000287- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
288 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
289
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000290- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
291
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000292- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
293 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000294
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000295- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
296 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
297
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000298- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
299
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000300- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
301
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000302- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
303
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000304- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
305 Percivall.
306
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000307- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
308 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
309
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000310- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
311 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
312 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000313 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000314
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000315- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
316 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
317 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
318 and exponent.
319
320- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
321
322- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
323 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
324 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
325
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000326- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
327 to the readline module.
328
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000329- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000330 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
331 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000332
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000333- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
334 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
335 contains symlinks.
336
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000337- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
338 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
339
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000340- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
341 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
342 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
343
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000344- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
345 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
346 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
347 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
348 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
349 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
350 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
351 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
352 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
353 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
354 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
355 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
356 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
357
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000358- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
359
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000360Tools/Demos
361-----------
362
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000363- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
364 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
365
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000366- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
367
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000368Build
369-----
370
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000371- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
372 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
373 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
374 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
375 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
376 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
377 plans to do so.
378
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000379- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
380 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
381
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000382- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
383 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
384
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000385- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
386 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
387
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000388- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
389 GNU/k*BSD systems.
390
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000391- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
392 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
393
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000394C API
395-----
396
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000397..
398
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000399Documentation
400-------------
401
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000402- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
403 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
404
405- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
406 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
407 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000408
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000409New platforms
410-------------
411
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000412- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
413
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000414Tests
415-----
416
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000417..
418
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000419Windows
420-------
421
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000422- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
423 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
424 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
425 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
426 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
427 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
428 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
429 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
430 the problem.
431
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000432Mac
433---
434
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000435..
436
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000437
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000438What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
439=================================
440
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000441*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000442
443Core and builtins
444-----------------
445
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000446- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
447 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
448 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
449 sensitive code.
450
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000451- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000452 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000453
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000454 @staticmethod
455 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000456
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000457 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000458
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000459- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
460 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
461 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
462 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
463 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
464 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
465 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
466 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
467 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
468 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
469 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
470
471 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
472 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
473 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
474 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
475 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
476 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
477 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
478
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000479- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
480 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
481
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000482- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000483 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000484
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000485- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000486 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000487 which was missing for no apparent reason.
488
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000489- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000490 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
491 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
492
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000493- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
494 types that support garbage collection.
495
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000496- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
497
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000498- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
499 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
500 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
501 Jython.
502
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000503- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
504
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000505- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
506 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
507
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000508- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
509 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
510 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000511
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000512- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
513 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
514 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
515
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000516Extension modules
517-----------------
518
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000519- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
520
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000521Library
522-------
523
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000524- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
525 TIS-620
526
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000527- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
528 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
529 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
530 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
531 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
532 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
533 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
534 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
535 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
536 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
537
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000538- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
539
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000540- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
541 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
542 same as when the argument is omitted).
543 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
544
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000545- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
546
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000547- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
548 schemes are offered.
549
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000550- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
551
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000552- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
553 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
554 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
555
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000556- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
557
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000558- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
559 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
560
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000561- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
562 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
563 when dummy_threading is being used.
564
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000565- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
566 from a tarfile.
567
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000568- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000569 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000570
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000571- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
572 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
573 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
574 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
575
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000576- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
577 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
578
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000579- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
580 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
581 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
582 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
583 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
584 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
585 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
586 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
587 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
588 by some other method in progress).
589
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000590- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
591 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
592 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000593
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000594- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
595
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000596- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
597 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
598 AM Kuchling.
599
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000600- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
601 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
602 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
603
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000604- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
605 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
606 instead of unsigned.
607
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000608- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000609 no longer part of the public API.
610
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000611- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
612 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
613 string methods of the same name).
614
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000615- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000616 SF patch 945642.
617
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000618- doctest unittest integration improvements:
619
620 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
621
622 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
623 DocTestSuites.
624
625- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
626 that provide thread-local data.
627
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000628- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
629 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
630
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000631- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
632
633- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
634 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
635 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
636
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000637- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
638
639 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
640 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
641 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000642
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000643 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
644 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
645 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
646 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
647
648 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
649 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
650
651 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
652 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
653 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
654 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
655
656 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
657 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
658 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
659 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
660 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
661
662 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
663 wrapping help output.
664
665 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
666 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
667 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000668
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000669C API
670-----
671
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000672- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
673 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
674 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
675 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
676 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
677 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
678 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
679 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
680 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
681 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
682 its visible semantics have not changed.
683
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000684- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
685 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
686
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000687Documentation
688-------------
689
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000690- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000691
692 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000693 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000694
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000695 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000696
697 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
698
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000699- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000700
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000701Tests
702-----
703
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000704- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000705 platforms that use the Makefile.
706
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000707- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
708 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
709 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
710
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000711
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000712What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
713=================================
714
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000715*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000716
717Core and builtins
718-----------------
719
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000720- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
721 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
722 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
723 objects now (one object instead of three).
724
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000725- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
726 Windows DLLs.
727
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000728- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
729 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000730
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000731- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
732 a new .pyc magic.
733
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000734- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
735 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
736 be there.
737
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000738- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
739 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
740 the LC_NUMERIC category.
741
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000742- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
743 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
744 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
745
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000746- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
747
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000748- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
749 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
750 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000751
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000752- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
753 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
754
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000755- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
756
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000757- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000758 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000759
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000760- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
761
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000762- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
763
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000764- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
765 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
766
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000767- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
768 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
769 Fixes bug #858016 .
770
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000771- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
772 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
773 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
774
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000775- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
776 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
777 improves their performance (about 35%).
778
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000779- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
780 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
781 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
782
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000783- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
784 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
785 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
786 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
787
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000788- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
789 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
790 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
791 length is not known).
792
793- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
794 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000795 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
796 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000797 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
798
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000799- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
800 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
801
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000802- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
803 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
804 keyword arguments.
805
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000806- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
807 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
808 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
809
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +0000810- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
811 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
812 cases.
813
814- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
815 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
816 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
817 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
818 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
819 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
820 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
821 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
822 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
823 a release build.
824
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000825- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
826 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
827
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000828- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000829 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000830
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000831- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
832 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
833 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
834 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
835 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
836 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
837 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
838 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
839 destroyed.
840
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000841- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
842 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
843 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
844 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
845 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
846 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
847 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
848 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
849
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000850- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
851 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
852 character other than a space.
853
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000854- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
855 by the function object or by the method object, the function
856 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
857 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
858 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
859 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
860 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
861 attributes with the same name.
862
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000863- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
864 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
865 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
866 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
867 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
868 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
869 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
870 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
871 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
872 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
873 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
874 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
875 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
876 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000877
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000878- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
879 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
880 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
881 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
882 This has been repaired.
883
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000884- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
885
886- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
887
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000888- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
889 over a sequence.
890
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000891- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000892 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000893
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000894- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
895
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000896- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
897 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
898 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
899 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
900 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
901 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
902 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
903 records with equal keys is unchanged).
904
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000905- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
906 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
907 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
908
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000909- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
910 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
911 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
912 freelist.
913
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000914- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
915 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
916
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000917- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
918 number.
919
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000920- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
921 a TypeError exception.
922
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000923- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
924 820195.
925
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000926- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
927 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
928 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
929
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000930- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000931 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
932 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +0000933
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +0000934- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
935 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
936 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
937
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000938- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
939 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000940 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000941
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000942- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +0000943 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
944 the first call.
945
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000946
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000947Extension modules
948-----------------
949
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +0000950- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
951 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
952
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000953- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
954 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
955 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
956 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
957 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
958 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
959 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +0000960
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +0000961- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
962
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +0000963- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
964
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +0000965- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
966 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
967
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +0000968- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
969 fewer false positives.
970
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +0000971- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
972 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
973
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000974- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +0000975 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
976
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +0000977- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000978 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +0000979 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +0000980 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
981 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +0000982
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +0000983- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
984 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
985 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
986 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
987
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +0000988- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
989 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
990 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
991 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
992 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
993 #897625.
994
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +0000995- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
996 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
997
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +0000998- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
999 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1000 and pops on either side of the deque.
1001
1002- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1003 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1004
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001005- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1006 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1007 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1008 other functions that expect a function argument.
1009
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001010- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1011
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001012- os.getsid was added.
1013
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001014- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1015 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1016 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1017
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001018- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1019
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001020- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1021
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001022- readline.clear_history was added.
1023
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001024- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1025
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001026- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1027
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001028- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1029
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001030- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1031
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001032- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1033
1034- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1035
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001036- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1037
1038- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1039
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001040- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1041 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1042 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1043
1044- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1045 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1046 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1047 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1048 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1049 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1050 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1051
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001052- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1053 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1054 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1055 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001056
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001057- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001058 iterators from a single iterable.
1059
1060- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1061 of raising a TypeError exception.
1062
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001063- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1064 as parameter.
1065
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001066Library
1067-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001068
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001069- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1070 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1071 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001072
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001073- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1074 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1075 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001076
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001077- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001078
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001079- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1080 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001081
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001082- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1083 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1084
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001085- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1086
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001087- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001088 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001089
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001090- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001091 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001092
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001093- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1094
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001095- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1096 on cygwin and mingw32.
1097
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001098- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1099
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001100- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1101 module.
1102
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001103- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1104 installation scheme for all platforms.
1105
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001106- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001107 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001108
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001109- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1110 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1111 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1112
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001113- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1114 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1115 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1116
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001117- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1118
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001119- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1120
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001121- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1122 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1123
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001124- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1125 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1126 type pattern with the same value exists.
1127
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001128- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1129 when run from the command prompt).
1130
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001131- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1132 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1133
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001134- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1135 default sort).
1136
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001137- Added global runctx function to profile module
1138
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001139- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1140
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001141- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1142
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001143- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1144
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001145- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001146 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1147 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1148 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1149 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1150 accordingly.
1151
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001152- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1153 decoding standards.
1154
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001155- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1156 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1157 called for all requests.
1158
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001159- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1160 they are passed to the compiler.
1161
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001162- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1163 indent, width and depth.
1164
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001165- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1166 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1167
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001168- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1169 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1170
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001171- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1172
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001173- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1174
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001175- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1176
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001177- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1178 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1179
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001180- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001181 for better performance.
1182
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001183- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001184
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001185- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1186 a string).
1187
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001188- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1189
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001190- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1191
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001192- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1193
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001194- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1195
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001196- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1197 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1198 list of fieldnames.
1199
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001200- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1201 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1202
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001203- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1204
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001205- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1206 empty lists.
1207
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001208- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1209 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1210 and shelves.
1211
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001212- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1213 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1214
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001215- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001216 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1217 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001218
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001219- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1220 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001221 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001222
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001223- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001224 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1225 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1226
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001227- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1228 and removed in Py2.4.
1229
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001230- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1231
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001232- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1233
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001234Tools/Demos
1235-----------
1236
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001237- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1238 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1239
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001240- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1241
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001242- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1243 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1244 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1245 destination in situations where both files are given.
1246
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001247- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1248 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1249 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1250 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1251
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001252- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1253
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001254- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1255 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1256 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1257 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1258 now.
1259
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001260- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1261 in effect
1262
1263- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1264 C-c C-h
1265
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001266- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1267 -d option was given.
1268
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001269Build
1270-----
1271
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001272- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1273 build under OS X.
1274
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001275- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1276 --enable-profiling.
1277
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001278- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1279 is configured --with-tsc.
1280
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001281- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1282 on AMD64.
1283
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001284- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1285 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1286
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001287- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1288 removed.
1289
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001290- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1291 supported (see PEP 11).
1292
1293- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1294
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001295- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1296
1297- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1298 (see PEP 11).
1299
1300- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1301 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1302
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001303C API
1304-----
1305
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001306- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1307 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1308 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1309
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001310- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1311 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1312 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1313 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1314
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001315- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1316 generator objects.
1317
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001318- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1319 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001320 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1321 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001322
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001323- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1324 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1325
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001326- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1327 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1328 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1329 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1330 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1331
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001332- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1333 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1334 about 10% faster.
1335
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001336- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1337 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1338
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001339- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1340 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1341 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1342 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1343
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001344Windows
1345-------
1346
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001347- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1348 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1349 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1350 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1351
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001352- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1353 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1354 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1355
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001356
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001357What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1358===============================
1359
1360*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1361
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001362IDLE
1363----
1364
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001365- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1366 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1367 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1368 context-menu actions.
1369
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001370- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1371 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1372 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1373 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1374 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1375 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1376 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1377 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1378 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1379
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001380
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001381What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1382=============================================
1383
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001384*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001385
1386Core and builtins
1387-----------------
1388
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001389- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001390 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001391 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1392
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001393Extension modules
1394-----------------
1395
1396- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1397 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1398 than once. This has been fixed.
1399
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001400- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1401 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1402 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1403 call.
1404
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001405- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1406
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001407Library
1408-------
1409
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001410- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1411 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1412
1413- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1414 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1415 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1416 restored.
1417
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001418IDLE
1419----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001420
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001421- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001422
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001423Build
1424-----
1425
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001426- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1427 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1428
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001429C API
1430-----
1431
1432Windows
1433-------
1434
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001435- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1436 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1437
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001438- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1439
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001440Mac
1441---
1442
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001443- Various fixes to pimp.
1444
1445- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1446
1447- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1448 more problems than it solves.
1449
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001450
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001451What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1452=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001453
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001454*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1455
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001456Core and builtins
1457-----------------
1458
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001459- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1460 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1461
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001462- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1463 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001464 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001465
1466- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1467 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1468 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001469 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001470
1471- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1472 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001473
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001474- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1475 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1476 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1477
1478- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001479 770247.
1480
1481- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001482
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001483Extension modules
1484-----------------
1485
1486- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1487 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1488
1489- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1490
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001491- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1492
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001493- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1494 contained within the _strptime module.
1495
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001496- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1497 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1498
1499- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001500 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1501
1502- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1503 the find_class attribute, if present.
1504
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001505- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001506
1507 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1508 (SF bug 763298).
1509
1510 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001511 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1512 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1513 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001514
1515 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1516
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001517Library
1518-------
1519
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001520- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1521
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001522- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1523 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1524 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1525 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1526 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1527 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1528 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1529 or Tester().
1530
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001531- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1532 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1533 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1534 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1535 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1536 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1537 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1538 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1539 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001540
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001541 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001542
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001543- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1544 weren't before was an oversight.
1545
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001546- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1547 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1548
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001549- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1550 when there are no lines.
1551
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001552- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1553 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1554
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001555- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1556 to child processes.
1557
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001558- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1559
1560- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1561
1562- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1563 xmlrpclib.
1564
1565- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1566 responses.
1567
1568- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1569 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1570
1571- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1572 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1573 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1574
1575- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1576 used as patterns.
1577
1578- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1579 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1580 than Tk 8.3.
1581
1582- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1583
1584- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001585
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001586Tools/Demos
1587-----------
1588
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001589- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1590
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001591- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1592
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001593- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001594
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001595Build
1596-----
1597
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001598- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1599
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001600- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1601
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001602- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1603 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001604
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001605- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1606 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1607 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001608
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001609C API
1610-----
1611
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001612- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1613 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1614
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001615Windows
1616-------
1617
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001618- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1619 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1620 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1621 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1622 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1623 Python exception ::
1624
1625 thread.error: can't start new thread
1626
1627 is raised now.
1628
1629- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1630 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1631 instead of from DLL teardown.
1632
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001633Mac
1634---
1635
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001636- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001637 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001638 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1639 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1640 the executable in the bundle.
1641
1642- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001643
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001644- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1645
1646- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1647 on Panther.
1648
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001649What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1650================================
1651
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001652*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001653
1654Core and builtins
1655-----------------
1656
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001657- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1658 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1659 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1660 with the -i option.
1661
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001662- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1663 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1664
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001665- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1666 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1667
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001668- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1669 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1670 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1671 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1672 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1673 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1674 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1675 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1676 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1677 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1678 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1679 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1680 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001681
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001682- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1683 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1684 embedded in a lambda expression.
1685
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001686- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1687 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1688 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1689 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1690 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1691
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001692- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1693 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1694 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1695
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001696- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1697 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1698
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001699- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1700 It's writable again.
1701
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001702- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1703 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1704 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001705 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001706
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001707- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1708 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1709 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1710
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001711Extension modules
1712-----------------
1713
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001714- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1715 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1716
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001717- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1718 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1719 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1720 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1721
1722- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1723 collection.
1724
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001725- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1726 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1727 unique within a single program run.
1728
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001729- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1730 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1731
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001732- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1733 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1734
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001735- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1736 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001737
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001738- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1739
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001740- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1741 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1742
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001743- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1744 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1745 for many BSD-derived systems.
1746
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001747
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001748Library
1749-------
1750
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001751- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1752 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1753 primary ones:
1754
1755 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1756 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1757 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1758
1759 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1760 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1761 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1762 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1763 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1764 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1765
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001766- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1767 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1768 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1769 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1770 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1771 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1772 argument.
1773
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001774- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1775 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1776 in the archive.
1777
1778- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1779 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1780
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001781- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1782 569574).
1783
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001784- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1785 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1786 no more.
1787
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001788- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1789 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1790 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1791 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1792 code coverage.
1793
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001794- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1795 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1796 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001797 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1798 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001799
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001800- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1801 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1802 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001803 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001804
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001805- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1806
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001807- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1808 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1809 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1810 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1811
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001812- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1813 handling.
1814
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001815- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1816 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1817
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001818- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1819 in socket.py.
1820
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001821- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1822
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001823- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1824 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1825 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1826 opener with proxy support.
1827
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001828- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1829
1830- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1831
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001832Tools/Demos
1833-----------
1834
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001835- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1836
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001837- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1838
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001839- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1840 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001841
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001842- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1843 files.
1844
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001845Build
1846-----
1847
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001848- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001849 different root directory.
1850
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001851C API
1852-----
1853
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001854- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1855 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1856 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1857 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1858 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1859 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1860 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1861 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1862 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1863 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1864
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001865- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1866 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1867 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1868 from Python.
1869
1870
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001871New platforms
1872-------------
1873
1874None this time.
1875
1876Tests
1877-----
1878
1879- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1880 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1881
1882Windows
1883-------
1884
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001885- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1886
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001887- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1888 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1889 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1890 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1891 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1892 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1893 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1894 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1895 that's what it's for.
1896
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001897Mac
1898---
1899
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001900- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1901 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1902 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1903 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001904- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1905 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1906- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001907
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001908SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1909------------------------------------
1910
1911430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1912598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1913622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1914661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1915683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1916697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1917713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1918724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1919727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1920729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1921730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1922731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1923732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1924733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1925735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1926740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1927744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1928745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1929747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1930749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1931751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
1932753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
1933755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
1934757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
1935760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
1936
1937
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001938What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
1939================================
1940
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00001941*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001942
1943Core and builtins
1944-----------------
1945
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00001946- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
1947 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
1948
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00001949- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
1950 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
1951 and cannot be strings).
1952
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00001953- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
1954 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
1955 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
1956 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
1957
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00001958- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
1959 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
1960 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
1961 Python itself.
1962
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00001963- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
1964 the referenced object, if it has one.
1965
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00001966- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
1967 the thread started at
1968 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
1969
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00001970- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
1971 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
1972 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
1973 placed on a list index.
1974
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00001975- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
1976 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
1977 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
1978 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
1979
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001980- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
1981 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
1982 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
1983 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
1984 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
1985 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
1986 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
1987
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00001988- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
1989 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
1990 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
1991 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
1992 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
1993
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00001994- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
1995 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00001996
1997- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
1998 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
1999 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2000 #693195.)
2001
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002002- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2003 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002004
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002005- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002006 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002007 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2008 interpreter executions, would fail.
2009
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002010- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002011 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002012 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002013
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002014Extension modules
2015-----------------
2016
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002017- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2018 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2019 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2020 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2021
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002022- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2023 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2024
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002025- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2026 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2027 and Greg Chapman.)
2028
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002029- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2030 recursively.
2031
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002032- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002033 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2034 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2035 leaks.
2036
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002037- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2038
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002039- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2040 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2041 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2042 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2043 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2044 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2045 #705836.
2046
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002047- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002048 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2049
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002050- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2051 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2052 See SF bug #692416.
2053
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002054- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2055 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2056
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002057- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2058 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2059 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002060
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002061- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002062 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2063 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2064
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002065- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2066 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2067 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2068 timeouts to work properly.
2069
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002070Library
2071-------
2072
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002073- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2074 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2075 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2076 future release.
2077
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002078- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2079 for querying platform dependent features.
2080
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002081- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002082
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002083- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2084 pickle protocol versions.
2085
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002086- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2087 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2088 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2089
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002090- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2091
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002092- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2093 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2094 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2095 modules.
2096
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002097- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2098 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2099 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2100
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002101- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2102 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2103
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002104- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2105 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2106 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2107
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002108- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002109 MS Office extensions.
2110
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002111- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2112 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2113
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002114- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2115 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2116
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002117- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2118 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2119 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2120 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2121 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2122 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2123
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002124- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2125 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2126 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002127
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002128- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2129 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2130 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2131
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002132- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2133
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002134- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2135 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2136 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2137
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002138Tools/Demos
2139-----------
2140
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002141- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2142 See the module docstring for details.
2143
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002144Build
2145-----
2146
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002147- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2148 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002149
2150C API
2151-----
2152
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002153- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2154
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002155- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2156 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2157 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2158
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002159- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2160 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002161
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002162 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2163 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2164 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002165
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002166- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002167 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2168
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002169- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2170 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2171 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002172
2173New platforms
2174-------------
2175
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002176None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002177
2178Tests
2179-----
2180
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002181- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2182 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002183
2184Windows
2185-------
2186
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002187- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2188 function.
2189
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002190- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2191 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002192
2193Mac
2194---
2195
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002196- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2197 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002198
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002199- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2200 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002201
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002202- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2203 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2204 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002205
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002206- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002207 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2208 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002209
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002210- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2211 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002212
2213
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002214What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2215=================================
2216
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002217*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002218
2219Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002220-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002221
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002222- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2223 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2224 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2225
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002226- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2227 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2228 (SF patch #664376.)
2229
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002230- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2231 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2232 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2233 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2234 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2235 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002236 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002237
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002238- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2239 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2240 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2241 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002242 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002243
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002244- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2245 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2246 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2247 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2248 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2249 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2250 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2251 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2252 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2253 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2254 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2255
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002256- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2257 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2258 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2259 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2260 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2261 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2262
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002263- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2264 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2265
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002266- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2267 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2268 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2269 case.)
2270
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002271- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2272 passed as unicode strings.
2273
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002274- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2275 See SF bug #683467.
2276
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002277- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2278 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2279
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002280- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2281
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002282- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2283
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002284- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2285 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2286 arguments.
2287
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002288- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2289 See SF bug #667147.
2290
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002291- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002292 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002293 See SF bug #676155.
2294
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002295- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002296 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002297 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2298 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2299 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2300 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2301 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2302 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002303
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002304Extension modules
2305-----------------
2306
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002307- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2308 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2309 tp_as_number pointer.
2310
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002311- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2312 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2313 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2314 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2315 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2316
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002317- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2318
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002319- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2320
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002321- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002322 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002323 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2324 patch #678531.)
2325
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002326- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2327 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2328
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002329- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2330 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2331
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002332- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2333
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002334- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2335 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2336 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2337
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002338- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2339
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002340- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2341 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2342
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002343- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002344
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002345- datetime changes:
2346
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002347 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2348
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002349 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2350 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2351 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2352 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2353 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2354 now.
2355
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002356 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002357 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2358 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002359
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002360 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002361 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002362 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2363 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2364 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2365 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002366
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002367 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2368 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2369 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002370 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2371
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002372 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2373 by a later example coded by Guido.
2374
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002375 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002376 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2377 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2378 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002379 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2380 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2381
2382 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2383 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2384 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2385 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2386 tzinfo subclass instance.
2387
2388 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2389 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2390 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2391 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2392 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2393 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2394 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2395 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002396
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002397 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2398 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2399 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2400 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2401 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002402 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2403
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002404 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002405
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002406 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2407 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2408 as a naive datetime object.
2409
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002410 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2411 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2412 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2413
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002414 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2415 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2416 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2417 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2418 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2419 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2420 comparison.
2421
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002422 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2423 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2424 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2425 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002426 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002427
2428 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002429
2430 and ::
2431
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002432 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2433
2434 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2435 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2436 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2437 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2438
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002439 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2440 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2441 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2442 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2443 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2444
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002445 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2446 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002447 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2448 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002449
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002450Library
2451-------
2452
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002453- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2454 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2455
2456- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2457 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2458 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2459 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2460 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2461 See PEP 307 for details.
2462
2463- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2464 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2465
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002466- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2467 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002468 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002469 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2470 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002471 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002472
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002473- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2474 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2475
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002476- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2477 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2478 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2479
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002480- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2481
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002482- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2483 exception.
2484
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002485- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2486 class.
2487
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002488- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2489 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2490 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2491
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002492- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2493 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2494
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002495- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002496 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2497 See SF bug #659228.
2498
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002499- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2500 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2501 See SF patch #651082.
2502
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002503- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002504
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002505- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2506 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2507
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002508- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002509 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002510
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002511- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2512 DOS paths from other platforms.
2513
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002514Tools/Demos
2515-----------
2516
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002517- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2518 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2519 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2520 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2521 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2522 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2523 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2524 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2525 example:
2526
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002527 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2528 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002529
2530 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2531
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002532
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002533Build
2534-----
2535
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002536- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2537 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2538 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002539 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2540
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002541 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2542
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002543- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2544 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2545 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2546 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2547 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2548 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2549 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2550 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2551 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2552
2553- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2554 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2555 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2556 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2557
2558- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2559 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2560
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002561C API
2562-----
2563
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002564- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2565 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002566
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002567- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2568 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2569 tp_as_number pointer.
2570
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002571- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2572 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2573 (SF #681367)
2574
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002575- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2576 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2577 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2578 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002579
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002580Tests
2581-----
2582
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002583- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002584 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2585 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2586 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2587 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2588 pydoc.)
2589
2590- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2591
2592- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002593
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002594Windows
2595-------
2596
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002597- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2598 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2599 time).
2600
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002601- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2602 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2603
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002604- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2605 release without strong cryptography.
2606
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002607- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002608 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002609
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002610- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2611 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2612
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002613Mac
2614---
2615
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002616- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2617 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002618
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002619- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2620 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2621 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002622
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002623- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2624 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002625
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002626- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2627 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2628 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2629 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002630
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002631- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002632 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2633 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2634 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002635
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002636
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002637What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002638=================================
2639
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002640*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002641
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002642Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002643--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002644
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002645- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2646
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002647- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2648 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002649 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002650 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002651 a different meaning than before.
2652
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002653- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002654 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002655 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002656
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002657- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002658 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002659 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002660
2661- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2662 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2663 and deallocation.
2664
2665- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2666 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2667
2668- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2669 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2670 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2671 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2672 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2673
2674- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2675 now detected by the garbage collector.
2676
2677- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2678 [SF bug 519621]
2679
2680- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2681 identifier.
2682
2683- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2684 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2685 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2686 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2687 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2688 [SF bug 563060]
2689
2690- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2691 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2692 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2693 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2694 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2695
2696- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2697 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2698 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2699
2700- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2701
2702- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2703 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2704 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2705 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2706 state of the slots would be lost.)
2707
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002708Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002709-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002710
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002711- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002712 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2713 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2714 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2715 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002716 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2717 Jython 2.1.
2718
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002719- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002720 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002721 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2722 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2723 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2724 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2725 these, see PEP 302.
2726
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002727- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2728 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2729 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2730
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002731- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2732 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2733 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2734
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002735- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2736 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2737 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2738
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002739- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2740 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2741 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2742 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2743 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2744 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2745 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2746 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2747 releases or implementations.
2748
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002749- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002750 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2751 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002752
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002753- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2754 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2755
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002756- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2757 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2758 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2759
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002760- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2761 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2762
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002763- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2764 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002765 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2766 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002767
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002768- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2769 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2770 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2771 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2772 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2773
2774 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2775 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2776 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2777 pattern.
2778
2779 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2780 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2781 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2782 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2783
2784 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2785 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2786 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2787 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2788 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2789 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2790
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002791- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2792 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2793 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2794 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2795 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2796 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2797 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2798 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002799
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002800- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2801 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2802 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2803 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2804 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002805 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2806 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2807 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2808 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2809 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2810 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2811 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002812
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002813- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2814 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2815
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002816- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2817 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2818 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2819 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2820 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2821 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2822 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2823 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2824 to Zack Weinberg!
2825
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002826- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2827 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2828 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2829 type. This has been fixed now.
2830
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002831- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2832 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2833 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2834
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002835- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2836 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2837 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2838 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2839 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2840 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2841 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2842 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002843 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002844
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002845- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2846 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2847 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002848
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002849- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2850 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2851 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2852 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2853 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2854 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2855 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2856 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002857 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002858 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2859 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2860
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002861- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2862 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2863 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2864 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2865 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2866 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2867 this.)
2868
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002869- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2870 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002871 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002872 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002873 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2874 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002875 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2876 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002877
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002878- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2879 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2880 currently running.
2881
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002882- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2883 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2884 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2885 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2886
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002887- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2888 as directory names.
2889
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002890- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2891 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2892
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002893- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2894 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2895
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002896- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002897 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2898 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002899
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002900- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2901 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2902 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2903 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2904 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2905
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002906- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2907 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2908 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2909 removed.
2910
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002911- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2912 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2913 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2914
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002915- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2916 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2917 to __debug__.
2918
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002919- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2920 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2921 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2922
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002923- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2924 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2925 deprecated now.
2926
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002927- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2928 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2929 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002930
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002931- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
2932 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
2933 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
2934 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
2935 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00002936
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00002937- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
2938 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
2939
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002940- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
2941 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
2942 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002943 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002944 is backward compatible.
2945
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00002946- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
2947 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
2948 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
2949 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
2950 could access a pointer to freed memory.
2951
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00002952- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
2953 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
2954 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
2955 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
2956 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
2957 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002958
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00002959- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
2960 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
2961
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002962- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
2963 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
2964
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002965- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
2966 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
2967 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
2968 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
2969 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
2970
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00002971- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
2972 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
2973 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
2974
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002975- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00002976 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
2977
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00002978- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
2979 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
2980 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00002981
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00002982- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
2983 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
2984
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00002985- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
2986 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
2987 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
2988
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00002989- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
2990
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002991Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002992-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002993
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00002994- Added three operators to the operator module:
2995 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
2996 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
2997 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
2998
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00002999- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3000
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003001- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3002 archives.
3003
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003004- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3005 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3006 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3007
3008 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3009
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003010- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3011 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3012 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003013 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003014
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003015- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3016 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3017 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3018 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003019 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3020 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3021 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3022 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003023
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003024- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3025 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003026
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003027- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3028
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003029- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3030 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3031
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003032- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3033 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3034 supported.
3035
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003036- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3037
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003038- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3039 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003040
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003041- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3042 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3043
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003044- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3045
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003046- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3047 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3048
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003049- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3050 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3051 functions but callable type objects.
3052
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003053- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003054 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003055 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003056
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003057- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3058 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003059
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003060- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3061 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003062
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003063- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3064 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3065 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3066 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3067
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003068- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3069 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003070
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003071- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3072 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3073 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3074 and __imul__.
3075
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003076- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003077 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3078 is called.
3079
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003080- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3081 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3082 interpreter was compiled.
3083
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003084- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3085 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3086 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003087 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003088 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3089 1, not 2.
3090
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003091- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3092 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3093 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3094 limit.
3095
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003096- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3097 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3098 bug #623464.
3099
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003100- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3101 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3102 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3103 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3104
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003105Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003106-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003107
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003108- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3109
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003110- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3111 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3112 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3113 with Python 2.3a2.
3114
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003115- os.path exposes getctime.
3116
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003117- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003118 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003119 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003120 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003121 unit tests of floating point results.
3122
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003123- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3124 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3125 has been increased.
3126
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003127- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3128 executed.
3129
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003130- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3131 postinstallation script.
3132
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003133- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3134 test the current module.
3135
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003136- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003137 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3138 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3139 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3140 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3141
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003142- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003143 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003144 Ward's Optik package.
3145
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003146- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3147 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3148 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3149 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3150
3151- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3152 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003153 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003154
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003155- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3156 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3157 shelf are binary pickles.
3158
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003159- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3160 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3161
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003162- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3163 modules are iterators now.
3164
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003165- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3166 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3167 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3168 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3169 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3170 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003171
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003172- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3173 with their entity value.
3174
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003175- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3176
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003177- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3178 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003179
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003180- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3181 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003182 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003183
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003184- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3185 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3186 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3187 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3188 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3189 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3190 main():
3191
3192 import locale
3193 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3194
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003195- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3196 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3197
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003198- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3199 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3200 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3201 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3202 to the new standard.
3203
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003204- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3205 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3206 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3207 an extension to the database.
3208
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003209- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3210 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3211 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3212 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003213 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003214
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003215- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003216 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003217
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003218- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3219 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3220 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3221 bounded integers.
3222
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003223- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3224 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3225 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3226 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3227 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3228 in existence.
3229
3230 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3231 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3232 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3233 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3234 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3235 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3236
3237 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3238 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3239 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3240 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3241
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003242- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3243 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3244 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3245
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003246- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3247
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003248- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3249 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3250 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3251 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3252
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003253- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3254 argument.
3255
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003256- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3257 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3258 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3259 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3260 [SF patch 560794].
3261
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003262- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3263 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3264 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003265 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3266 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3267 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003268
3269- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3270 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003271
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003272- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3273 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3274 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3275 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003276
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003277- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3278 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3279 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3280 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3281 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3282
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003283- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003284
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003285- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3286
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003287- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3288 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3289 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3290 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3291 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3292 identical to None.
3293
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003294- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3295 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3296 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3297 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3298 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3299 results now.
3300
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003301- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3302 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3303
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003304- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3305 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3306 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3307 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3308 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3309 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3310 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3311 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3312
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003313- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3314
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003315- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3316 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3317
3318- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3319 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3320 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3321 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3322 and other systems.
3323
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003324- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3325 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3326 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3327 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 +00003328 work well with these.
3329
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003330- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3331
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003332- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003333 connections.
3334
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003335- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3336 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3337 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3338
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003339- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3340 sets
3341
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003342- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3343 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3344 name.
3345
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003346- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3347 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3348 passed in.
3349
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003350- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003351 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003352 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3353 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003354
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003355- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3356
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003357- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3358
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003359- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3360 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3361 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3362
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003363- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3364 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3365 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3366 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003367 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003368
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003369- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003370 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003371 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003372
3373- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3374 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3375 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3376
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003377- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003378 the value of its expression argument.
3379
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003380- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3381 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3382 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3383
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003384- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3385 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3386 skipstone browser was included.
3387
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003388- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3389 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3390
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003391Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003392-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003393
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003394- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3395 names in addition to accepting file names.
3396
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003397- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3398 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3399 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3400 still used and useful.)
3401
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003402- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3403 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3404 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3405 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003406
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003407- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3408 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3409 the generated binary.
3410
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003411Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003412-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003413
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003414- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3415
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003416- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3417 except in the hands of experts.
3418
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003419- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003420 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3421 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3422 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003423
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003424- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3425 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3426 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3427 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3428 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3429 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3430 builds.
3431
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003432- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3433 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3434 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3435 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3436 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3437 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3438 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3439 new type.
3440
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003441- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003442
3443 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3444 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3445 positive infinities.
3446
3447 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3448 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3449 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3450 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3451 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3452 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3453 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3454
3455 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3456
3457 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3458
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003459- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3460 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3461 size of the executable.
3462
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003463- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3464 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3465 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3466 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003467
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003468- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3469
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003470- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3471 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3472 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003473
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003474- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3475 well as Unix.
3476
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003477- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3478 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3479 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3480 modules in the README file for details.
3481
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003482C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003483-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003484
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003485- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3486 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003487 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003488 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003489 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003490
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003491- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3492 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3493 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3494 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3495 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3496 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003497 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003498 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3499 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3500 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3501 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3502 aligned.)
3503
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003504- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3505 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3506 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3507
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003508- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3509 level.
3510
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003511- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3512 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3513 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3514 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3515 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3516
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003517- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3518 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3519 code.
3520
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003521- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3522 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3523 adjusting for negative indices.
3524
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003525- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3526 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3527 object.
3528
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003529- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3530 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3531 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3532
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003533- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3534 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003535
3536- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3537
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003538- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3539 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3540 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3541 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3542
3543- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3544
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003545- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003546
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003547- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003548 without going through the buffer API.
3549
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003550- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003551
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003552- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3553 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3554 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3555 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3556
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003557- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3558 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3559
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003560- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003561 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3562
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003563New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003564-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003565
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003566- OpenVMS is now supported.
3567
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003568- AtheOS is now supported.
3569
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003570- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3571
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003572- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3573
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003574Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003575-----
3576
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003577- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3578 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3579 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003580
3581Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003582-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003583
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003584- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3585 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3586 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3587 bugs.
3588 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003589 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003590 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3591 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003592 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003593
3594- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003595 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003596
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003597- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3598 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3599
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003600- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3601 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003602 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003603 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3604
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003605- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3606 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3607 use files" uninstall option).
3608
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003609- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3610
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003611- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3612 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3613
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003614- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3615 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3616 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3617
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003618- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3619 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3620 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3621 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3622 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003623 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3624 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3625 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003626
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003627- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003628 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003629 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3630 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3631 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3632 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3633 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3634 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3635 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3636 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3637 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3638 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3639 work around.
3640
3641- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3642 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3643 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3644 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3645 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3646 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3647 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3648 specified with O_CREAT too).
3649
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003650Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003651----
3652
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003653- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003654
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003655- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3656 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3657 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3658
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003659- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3660 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3661 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3662
3663- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3664 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3665 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3666 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3667 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3668 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3669 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3670 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003671
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003672- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3673 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3674 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003675
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003676- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3677 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3678 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3679 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3680 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003681
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003682- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3683 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3684 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003685
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003686- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3687 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003688
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003689- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3690 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3691 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3692 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3693 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003694
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003695- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3696 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3697 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3698
3699- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3700 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3701 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003702
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003703- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3704 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3705 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3706 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003707 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003708
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003709- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3710 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003711
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003712- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3713 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003714
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003715- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003716 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003717 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3718 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003719
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003720
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003721What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003722===============================
3723
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003724*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3725
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003726Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003727--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003728
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003729- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3730 with a custom metaclass.
3731
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003732Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003733-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003734
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003735- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3736 are proxies.
3737
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003738Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003739-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003740
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003741- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3742 very short strings.
3743
3744- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3745 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3746 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3747 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3748 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3749
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003750Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003751-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003752
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003753- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3754 close or delete time).
3755
3756- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3757 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3758
3759- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3760
3761- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003762 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003763
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003764Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003765-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003766
3767Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003768-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003769
3770C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003771-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003772
3773New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003774-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003775
3776Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003777-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003778
3779Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003780-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003781
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003782- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3783
3784- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3785 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3786
3787- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3788 deleted at process exit time.
3789
3790- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3791 in backslash.
3792
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003793Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003794----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003795
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003796- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3797 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3798 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3799
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003800
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003801What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003802===========================
3803
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003804*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3805
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003806Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003807--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003808
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003809- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3810 been extensively updated. See
3811
3812 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3813
3814 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3815
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003816- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3817 deleted!
3818
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003819- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3820 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3821 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3822 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3823 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3824
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003825- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3826
3827 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3828 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3829
3830 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3831 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3832 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3833 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3834 supported anyway.
3835
3836 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3837 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3838
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003839- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3840 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3841 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3842 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3843 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003844
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003845- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3846 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3847 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3848
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003849Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003850-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003851
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003852- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3853 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3854 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3855 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3856 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3857 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003858 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3859 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3860 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3861 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003862
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003863- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3864 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3865 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3866
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003867Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003868-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003869
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003870- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3871
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003872Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003873-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003874
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003875- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3876 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3877 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3878 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3879 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3880 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3881
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003882- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3883
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003884- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3885
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003886- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3887
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003888- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3889 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3890 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3891
3892- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3893
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003894Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003895-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003896
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003897- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3898 off a search on Google.
3899
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003900Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003901-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003902
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003903- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3904 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3905 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3906 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3907 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3908 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3909 other platforms should do likewise.
3910
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003911- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3912 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3913 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3914
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003915C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003916-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003917
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003918- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3919 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3920 producing key-value pairs.
3921
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003922- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003923 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003924 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3925 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3926 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3927 previously went unchallenged.
3928
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003929New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003930-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003931
3932Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003933-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003934
3935Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003936-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003937
3938Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003939----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003940
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00003941- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
3942 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003943
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003944- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
3945 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
3946 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
3947 home.
3948
3949
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003950What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003951===========================
3952
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003953*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
3954
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003955Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003956--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003957
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003958- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
3959 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003960
3961 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003962 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003963
3964 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
3965 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003966 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003967 This needs to be documented.
3968
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00003969- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
3970 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
3971
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00003972- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
3973 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
3974 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
3975
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00003976- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
3977 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
3978
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003979- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
3980 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
3981 class forbids it).
3982
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00003983- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
3984 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
3985 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
3986
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003987- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
3988
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003989Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003990-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003991
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003992- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
3993 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003994 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003995
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003996- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
3997 (like 1 + '').
3998
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003999Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004000-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004001
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004002- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4003 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4004 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4005 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004006 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004007 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4008
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004009- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4010 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4011 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4012 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4013
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004014- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4015 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004016 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4017 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4018 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004019
4020- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4021 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004022
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004023- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4024 bytes on its input.
4025
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004026Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004027-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004028
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004029- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004030 convenience function.
4031
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004032- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4033 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4034 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004035 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4036 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4037 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4038 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4039 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4040 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004041
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004042- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4043 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4044 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4045 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4046
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004047- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4048 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4049 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4050
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004051- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4052 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4053 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4054 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4055
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004056- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4057 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004058 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004059 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4060 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4061 new -l and -e options.
4062
4063- statcache is now deprecated.
4064
4065- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4066 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004067 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004068 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4069 time properly taken into account.
4070
4071- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4072 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4073 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4074 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4075
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004076Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004077-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004078
4079Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004080-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004081
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004082- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4083 is built with libdb3 if available.
4084
4085- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4086
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004087C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004088-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004089
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004090- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4091 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4092 PySequence_Size().
4093
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004094- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4095
4096- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4097 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4098 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4099
4100- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4101 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4102
4103- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4104 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4105
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004106New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004107-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004108
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004109- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4110 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4111
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004112- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4113 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4114
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004115- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4116
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004117Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004118-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004119
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004120- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4121 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4122
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004123Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004124-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004125
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004126Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004127----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004128
4129- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4130 removed completely in the next release.
4131
4132- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4133 OSX.
4134
4135- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4136 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4137
4138- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4139
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004140
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004141What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004142===========================
4143
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004144*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4145
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004146Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004147--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004148
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004149- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004150 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004151 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004152 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4153 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004154 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4155 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004156 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4157 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004158
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004159- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4160 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4161
4162- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4163 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4164
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004165Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004166-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004167
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004168- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4169 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4170 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4171 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4172 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4173 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4174 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4175 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4176
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004177- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4178 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4179 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4180 example).
4181
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004182- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004183 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004184 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004185 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004186
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004187- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4188 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4189 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004190 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004191
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004192- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4193 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4194 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4195 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4196 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4197 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4198
4199 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4200
4201 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4202
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004203Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004204-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004205
4206- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4207
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004208- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4209
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004210- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4211 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004212
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004213- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4214 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4215 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4216 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4217 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4218 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004219 attributes.
4220
4221- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4222 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4223 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004224
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004225- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4226 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4227 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004228
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004229- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4230 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4231 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004232 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4233 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4234
4235- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4236 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004237
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004238Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004239-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004240
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004241- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4242 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4243
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004244- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4245 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4246 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4247 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4248
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004249- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4250 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4251 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4252 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4253
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004254 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4255 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4256 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4257 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4258 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4259 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4260 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4261 without losing information).
4262
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004263- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004264 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4265 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4266 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4267 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4268 module).
4269
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004270 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004271 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4272 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4273 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4274 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004275
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004276- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004277 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4278 encoding.
4279
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004280- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4281 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4282
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004283- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004284 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4285
4286- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4287 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4288 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4289 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4290
4291- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4292
4293- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4294 ON, and OFF.
4295
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004296- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4297 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4298
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004299Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004300-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004301
4302- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4303 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4304 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004305
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004306- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4307 been added: -X and -E.
4308
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004309Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004310-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004311
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004312- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4313 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4314
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004315C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004316-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004317
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004318- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4319 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4320 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4321 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4322 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4323
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004324- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4325 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4326 as long) arguments.
4327
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004328- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4329 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4330 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4331 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4332 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4333 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4334
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004335- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4336 input.
4337
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004338New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004339-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004340
4341Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004342-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004343
4344Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004345-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004346
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004347- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4348 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4349 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4350
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004351- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4352 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4353 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004354 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004355
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004356 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4357 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4358 import signal
4359 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004360
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004361 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004362 while 1:
4363 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004364 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004365 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4366 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4367 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4368 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004369
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004370
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004371What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4372===========================
4373
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004374*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4375
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004376Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004377--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004378
4379- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4380 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4381 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4382
4383- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4384 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4385 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4386 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4387 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4388 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4389 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004390
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004391- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004392 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004393 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4394 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4395 associate a docstring with a property.
4396
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004397- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4398 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4399 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4400 other built-in object types.
4401
4402- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4403 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4404 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4405 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4406 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4407
4408- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4409 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4410
4411- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4412 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004413 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004414 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4415 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4416 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4417 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4418 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4419
4420- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4421 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4422 class.
4423
4424- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4425 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4426 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4427 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4428
4429- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4430 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4431 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4432 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4433
4434- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4435 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4436
4437- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4438 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4439 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4440 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4441 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004442 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004443 with the same value as s.
4444
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004445- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4446
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004447Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004448----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004449
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004450- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4451
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004452- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4453 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4454 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4455 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4456 objects.
4457
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004458- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4459 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004460 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4461 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4462
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004463- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4464 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4465 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4466
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004467Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004468-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004469
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004470- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4471 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4472 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4473 by the instances.
4474
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004475- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4476 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4477 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4478
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004479- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4480 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4481 before the entire comparison is complete.
4482
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004483- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4484 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4485 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4486
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004487- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4488 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4489 getwriter().
4490
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004491- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4492 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4493
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004494- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004495 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4496 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4497
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004498- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4499 iterable object.
4500
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004501- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4502 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004503
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004504- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4505 authentication.
4506
4507- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4508 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004509
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004510- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004511 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4512 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4513 a sample driver.)
4514
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004515Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004516-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004517
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004518- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4519 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4520 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4521 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4522 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4523 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4524 kernel has large file support.
4525
4526- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4527 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4528 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4529 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4530 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4531
4532- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4533 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4534 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4535
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004536C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004537-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004538
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004539- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4540 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4541
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004542New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004543-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004544
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004545- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4546 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4547
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004548Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004549-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004550
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004551- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4552 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4553 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4554 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4555 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4556
4557- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4558 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4559 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4560 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4561
4562- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4563 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4564
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004565Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004566-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004567
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004568- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004569 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4570 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004571
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004572
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004573What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4574===========================
4575
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004576*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4577
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004578Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004579----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004580
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004581- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4582 big to represent as a C double.
4583
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004584- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4585 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4586 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4587 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4588 restriction).
4589
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004590- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4591 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4592 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4593 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4594 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4595
4596 >>> dir([])
4597 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4598 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4599 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4600 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4601 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4602 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4603 'reverse', 'sort']
4604
4605 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4606
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004607- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004608 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4609 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4610 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4611 OverflowError exception.
4612
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004613- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004614 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004615 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4616 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4617 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4618 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4619 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004620 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004621 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4622 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4623
4624 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4625 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4626 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4627 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004628
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004629- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004630 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4631 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4632 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4633 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4634 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4635 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4636 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4637 once it is created.
4638
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004639- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4640 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4641 (key, value) pairs.
4642
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004643- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004644 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4645 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4646
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004647- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4648 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4649 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4650 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4651 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004652
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004653- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004654 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4655 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4656
4657 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4658
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004659- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004660 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4661
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004662Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004663-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004664
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004665- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004666 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4667 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004668
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004669- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4670 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4671 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4672 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4673 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4674 in this area anymore).
4675
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004676- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4677 threading.Timer.
4678
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004679- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4680 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4681
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004682- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004683 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4684
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004685- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004686 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4687 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4688 converted to Python longs.
4689
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004690- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004691 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4692
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004693- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4694 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4695 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4696
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004697Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004698-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004699
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004700- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4701 division operators as per PEP 238.
4702
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004703Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004704-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004705
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004706- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4707 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4708 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4709 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4710
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004711C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004712-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004713
4714- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004715
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004716- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4717 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004718 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004719
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004720 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4721 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004722 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004723 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004724
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004725- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004726 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4727 module:
4728
4729 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004730
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004731 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4732 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004733
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004734 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4735 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004736
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004737 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4738
4739 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4740
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004741- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004742 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4743 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4744 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004745
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004746New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004747-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004748
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004749- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4750 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4751 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4752 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4753 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004754
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004755Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004756-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004757
4758Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004759-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004760
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004761- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4762 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4763 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4764 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004765 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4766 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4767 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4768 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4769 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004770
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004771- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004772 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4773
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004774
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004775What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4776===========================
4777
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004778*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4779
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004780Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004781-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004782
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004783- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4784 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4785
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004786- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4787 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4788 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004789
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004790- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4791 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4792 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4793 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004794
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004795- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4796
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004797- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004798
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004799Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004800-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004801
4802- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004803 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004804 the module docstring for details.
4805
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004806Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004807-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004808
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004809- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004810 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4811 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4812 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004813
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004814- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4815 Nick Mathewson.
4816
4817Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004818----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004819
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004820- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4821 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4822 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4823 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4824 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4825 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4826 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4827 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4828
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004829- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4830 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4831 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4832 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4833
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004834- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4835 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4836 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4837 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4838 come a long way).
4839
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004840- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4841 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4842 write filters for these warnings).
4843
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004844- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4845 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4846 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4847 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4848 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4849
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004850- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4851 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4852 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4853 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4854 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4855 older distribution.
4856
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004857Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004858-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004859
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004860- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4861 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004862 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004863
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004864- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4865 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4866 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4867
4868- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4869
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004870- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4871
4872- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4873
4874- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4875
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004876- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004877
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004878- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4879
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004880New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004881-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004882
4883C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004884-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004885
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004886- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4887 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4888 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4889 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4890 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4891 against buffer overruns.
4892
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004893- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004894 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4895 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004896 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4897 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4898 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4899
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004900- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4901 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4902 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4903 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4904 deprecated.
4905
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004906Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004907-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004908
4909- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4910 relevant is found.
4911
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004912
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004913What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004914===========================
4915
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004916*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4917
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004918Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004919----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004920
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004921- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4922 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4923 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4924 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4925 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4926 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4927 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4928 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004929 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004930 repaired.
4931
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004932- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00004933 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004934 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
4935 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
4936 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
4937 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
4938 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
4939 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
4940 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
4941 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
4942
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00004943- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
4944 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
4945 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
4946 leading BMO character).
4947
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004948- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
4949 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
4950 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
4951
4952 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
4953 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
4954 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004955
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004956 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
4957 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
4958 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
4959 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
4960 for various simple to use conversions.
4961
4962 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
4963 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
4964
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004965 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4966 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
4967 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
4968 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
4969 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4970 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
4971 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4972 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
4973 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4974 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
4975 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4976 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
4977 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4978 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
4979 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004980
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004981- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
4982 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
4983 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004984 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004985 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004986
4987 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004988 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
4989 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
4990 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
4991 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
4992 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004993 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
4994 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004995
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004996 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
4997 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
4998 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004999 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005000
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005001- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5002 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5003 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5004 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5005 floating arithmetic,
5006
5007 x = 9007199254740992.0
5008 print long(x)
5009
5010 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5011 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5012 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5013 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5014 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5015 functions are of good quality).
5016
5017 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5018 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5019 algorithms to break.
5020
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005021- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5022 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5023 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5024 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5025 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5026 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5027 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5028 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5029 order.
5030
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005031- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5032 operation along the most common code paths.
5033
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005034- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5035 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5036
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005037- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5038 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5039 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5040 {}.update(UserDict())
5041
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005042- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5043 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5044 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5045 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5046 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5047 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5048 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5049 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5050
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005051- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005052 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005053
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005054 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005055 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5056 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005057 join() method of strings
5058 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005059 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5060 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005061 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005062 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005063
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005064- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5065 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5066
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005067- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5068 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5069
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005070- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5071 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5072 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5073 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5074
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005075- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5076 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005077 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005078 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5079 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005080
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005081- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5082
5083
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005084Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005085-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005086
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005087- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005088 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005089 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5090 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5091
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005092- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5093 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5094
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005095- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5096 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5097 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5098 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5099
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005100- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5101 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5102 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5103
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005104- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5105
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005106- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5107
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005108- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5109 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5110 that are still imported into string.py).
5111
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005112- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5113
5114- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5115 Now it does.
5116
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005117- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5118
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005119- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5120 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5121 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5122 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5123 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005124 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5125 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005126
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005127- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5128 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5129 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5130 'help(object)'.
5131
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005132Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005133-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005134
5135- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005136 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005137 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5138 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5139
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005140- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005141 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5142 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005143
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005144C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005145-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005146
5147- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5148 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005149
5150----
5151
5152**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**