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Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00001What's New in Python 2.2 final?
2Release date: 21-Dec-2001
3===============================
4
5Type/class unification and new-style classes
6
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00007- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
8 with a custom metaclass.
9
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +000010Core and builtins
11
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +000012- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
13 are proxies.
14
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +000015Extension modules
16
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +000017- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
18 very short strings.
19
20- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
21 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
22 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
23 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
24 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
25
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +000026Library
27
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +000028- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
29 close or delete time).
30
31- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
32 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
33
34- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
35
36- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
37 when run from the standard regresssion test.
38
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +000039Tools/Demos
40
41Build
42
43C API
44
45New platforms
46
47Tests
48
49Windows
50
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +000051- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
52
53- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
54 instances are deleted at process exit time.
55
56- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
57 deleted at process exit time.
58
59- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
60 in backslash.
61
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +000062Mac
63
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +000064- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
65 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
66 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
67
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +000068
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +000069What's New in Python 2.2c1?
70Release date: 14-Dec-2001
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +000071===========================
72
73Type/class unification and new-style classes
74
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +000075- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
76 been extensively updated. See
77
78 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
79
80 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
81
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +000082- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
83 deleted!
84
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +000085- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
86 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
87 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
88 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
89 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
90
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +000091- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
92
93 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
94 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
95
96 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
97 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
98 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
99 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
100 supported anyway.
101
102 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
103 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
104
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +0000105- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
106 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
107 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
108 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
109 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +0000110
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +0000111- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
112 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
113 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
114
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000115Core and builtins
116
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000117- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
118 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
119 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
120 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
121 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
122 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +0000123 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
124 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
125 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
126 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000127
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +0000128- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
129 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
130 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
131
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000132Extension modules
133
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +0000134- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
135
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000136Library
137
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +0000138- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
139 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
140 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
141 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
142 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
143 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
144
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +0000145- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
146
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +0000147- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
148
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +0000149- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
150
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000151- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
152 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
153 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
154
155- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
156
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000157Tools/Demos
158
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000159- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
160 off a search on Google.
161
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000162Build
163
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000164- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
165 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
166 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
167 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
168 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
169 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
170 other platforms should do likewise.
171
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +0000172- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
173 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
174 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
175
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000176C API
177
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +0000178- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
179 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
180 producing key-value pairs.
181
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +0000182- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +0000183 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +0000184 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
185 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
186 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
187 previously went unchallenged.
188
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000189New platforms
190
191Tests
192
193Windows
194
195Mac
196
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +0000197- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
198 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000199
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000200- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
201 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
202 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
203 home.
204
205
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000206What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +0000207Release date: 16-Nov-2001
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000208===========================
209
210Type/class unification and new-style classes
211
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +0000212- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
213 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +0000214
215 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +0000216 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +0000217
218 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
219 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
220 using new-style MRO rules if any base clase is a new-style class.
221 This needs to be documented.
222
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +0000223- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
224 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
225
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +0000226- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
227 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
228 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
229
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +0000230- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
231 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
232
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000233- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
234 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
235 class forbids it).
236
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +0000237- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
238 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
239 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
240
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +0000241- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
242
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000243Core and builtins
244
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +0000245- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
246 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000247 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +0000248
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000249- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
250 (like 1 + '').
251
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000252Extension modules
253
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +0000254- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
255 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
256 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
257 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
258 uniform way because the mmap() signuatures had diverged across
259 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
260
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +0000261- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
262 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
263 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
264 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
265
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000266- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
267 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +0000268 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
269 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
270 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000271
272- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
273 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +0000274
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +0000275- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
276 bytes on its input.
277
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000278Library
279
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +0000280- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +0000281 convenience function.
282
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +0000283- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
284 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
285 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000286 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
287 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
288 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
289 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
290 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
291 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +0000292
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +0000293- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
294 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
295 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
296 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
297
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +0000298- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
299 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
300 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
301
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +0000302- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
303 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
304 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
305 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
306
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000307- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
308 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
309 optional `strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
310 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
311 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
312 new -l and -e options.
313
314- statcache is now deprecated.
315
316- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
317 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
318 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional `localtime' flag is
319 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
320 time properly taken into account.
321
322- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
323 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
324 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
325 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
326
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000327Tools/Demos
328
329Build
330
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000331- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
332 is built with libdb3 if available.
333
334- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
335
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000336C API
337
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +0000338- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
339 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
340 PySequence_Size().
341
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000342- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
343
344- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
345 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
346 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
347
348- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
349 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
350
351- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
352 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
353
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000354New platforms
355
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +0000356- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
357 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
358
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +0000359- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
360 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
361
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +0000362- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
363
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000364Tests
365
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +0000366- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
367 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
368
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000369Windows
370
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000371Mac
372
373- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
374 removed completely in the next release.
375
376- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
377 OSX.
378
379- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
380 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
381
382- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
383
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000384
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000385What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000386Release date: 19-Oct-2001
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000387===========================
388
389Type/class unification and new-style classes
390
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +0000391- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +0000392 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +0000393 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +0000394 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
395 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +0000396 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
397 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +0000398 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
399 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +0000400
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +0000401- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
402 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
403
404- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
405 class methods, static methods, and properties.
406
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000407Core and builtins
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000408
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +0000409- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
410 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
411 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
412 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
413 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
414 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
415 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
416 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
417
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000418- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
419 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
420 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
421 example).
422
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +0000423- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +0000424 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +0000425 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000426 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +0000427
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000428- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
429 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
430 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +0000431 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000432
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000433- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
434 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
435 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
436 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
437 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
438 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
439
440 isinstance(x, (A, B))
441
442 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
443
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000444Extension modules
445
446- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
447
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +0000448- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
449
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +0000450- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
451 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +0000452
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +0000453- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
454 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
455 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
456 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
457 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
458 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +0000459 attributes.
460
461- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
462 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
463 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +0000464
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000465- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
466 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
467 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000468
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +0000469- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
470 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
471 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000472 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
473 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
474
475- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
476 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +0000477
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000478Library
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +0000479
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +0000480- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
481 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
482
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +0000483- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
484 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
485 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
486 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
487
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +0000488- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
489 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
490 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
491 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
492
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +0000493 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
494 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
495 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
496 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
497 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
498 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
499 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
500 without losing information).
501
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +0000502- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +0000503 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
504 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
505 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
506 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
507 module).
508
509 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overriden by subclasses.
510 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
511 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
512 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
513 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +0000514
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +0000515- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +0000516 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
517 encoding.
518
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +0000519- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
520 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
521
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000522- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a `file' argument
523 to allow saving the message body to a file.
524
525- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
526 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
527 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
528 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
529
530- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
531
532- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
533 ON, and OFF.
534
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +0000535- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
536 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
537
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +0000538Tools/Demos
539
540- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
541 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
542 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000543
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000544- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
545 been added: -X and -E.
546
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000547Build
548
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000549- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
550 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
551
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000552C API
553
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +0000554- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
555 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
556 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
557 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
558 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
559
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +0000560- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
561 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
562 as long) arguments.
563
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +0000564- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
565 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
566 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
567 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
568 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
569 report any bugs or strange behavior).
570
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000571- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
572 input.
573
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000574New platforms
575
576Tests
577
578Windows
579
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +0000580- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
581 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
582 is created for .py and .pyw files.
583
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +0000584- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
585 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
586 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
587 signal.signal(). For example:
588
589 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
590 # (SIGINT) behavior.
591 import signal
592 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK,
593 signal.default_int_handler)
594
595 try:
596 while 1:
597 pass
598 except KeyboardInterrupt:
599 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
600 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
601 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
602 print "Clean exit"
603
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000604
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000605What's New in Python 2.2a4?
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +0000606Release date: 28-Sep-2001
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000607===========================
608
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000609Type/class unification and new-style classes
610
611- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
612 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
613 documentation for all operations on list objects.
614
615- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
616 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
617 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
618 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
619 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
620 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
621 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000622
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +0000623- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
624 These map to readonly attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
625 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
626 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
627 associate a docstring with a property.
628
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000629- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
630 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
631 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
632 other built-in object types.
633
634- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
635 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
636 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
637 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
638 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
639
640- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
641 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
642
643- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
644 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +0000645 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000646 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
647 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
648 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
649 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
650 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
651
652- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
653 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
654 class.
655
656- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
657 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
658 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
659 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
660
661- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
662 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
663 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
664 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
665
666- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
667 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
668
669- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
670 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
671 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
672 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
673 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
674 a str sublass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
675 with the same value as s.
676
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +0000677- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
678
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000679Core
680
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +0000681- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
682
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +0000683- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
684 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
685 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
686 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
687 objects.
688
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +0000689- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
690 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +0000691 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
692 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
693
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000694- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
695 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
696 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
697
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000698Library
699
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +0000700- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
701 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
702 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
703 by the instances.
704
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +0000705- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
706 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
707 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
708
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +0000709- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
710 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
711 before the entire comparison is complete.
712
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +0000713- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
714 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
715 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
716
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +0000717- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
718 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
719 getwriter().
720
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000721- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
722 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
723
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +0000724- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000725 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
726 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
727
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +0000728- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
729 iterable object.
730
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000731- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
732 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +0000733
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000734- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
735 authentication.
736
737- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
738 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +0000739
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000740- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +0000741 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
742 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
743 a sample driver.)
744
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +0000745Tools
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000746
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000747Build
748
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000749- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
750 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
751 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
752 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
753 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
754 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
755 kernel has large file support.
756
757- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
758 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
759 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
760 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
761 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
762
763- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
764 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
765 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
766
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000767C API
768
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000769- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
770 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
771
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000772New platforms
773
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000774- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
775 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
776
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000777Tests
778
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +0000779- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
780 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
781 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
782 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
783 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
784
785- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
786 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
787 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
788 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
789
790- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
791 especially in regard to reporting errors.
792
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000793Windows
794
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000795- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +0000796 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
797 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000798
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000799
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000800What's New in Python 2.2a3?
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +0000801Release Date: 07-Sep-2001
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000802===========================
803
804Core
805
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +0000806- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
807 big to represent as a C double.
808
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +0000809- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
810 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
811 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
812 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
813 restriction).
814
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +0000815- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
816 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
817 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
818 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
819 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
820
821 >>> dir([])
822 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
823 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
824 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
825 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
826 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
827 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
828 'reverse', 'sort']
829
830 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
831
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000832- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000833 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
834 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
835 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
836 OverflowError exception.
837
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +0000838- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000839 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +0000840 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
841 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
842 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
843 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
844 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000845 (for use with fixdiv.py).
846 [Note: the remainder of this paragraph (preserved below) became
847 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2]
848 <obsolete>
849 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
850 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
851 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
852 warns about classic division everywhere else.
853 </obsolete>
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000854
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000855- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000856 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
857 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
858 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
859 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
860 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
861 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
862 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
863 once it is created.
864
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +0000865- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
866 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
867 (key, value) pairs.
868
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000869- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000870 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
871 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
872
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +0000873- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
874 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
875 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
876 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
877 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000878
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000879- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000880 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
881 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
882
883 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
884
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000885- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +0000886 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
887
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000888Library
889
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +0000890- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
891 setting an option negotiation callback.
892
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +0000893- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
894 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
895 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
896 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
897 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
898 in this area anymore).
899
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +0000900- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
901 threading.Timer.
902
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +0000903- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
904 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
905
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000906- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +0000907 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
908
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000909- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +0000910 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
911 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
912 converted to Python longs.
913
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000914- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000915 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
916
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +0000917- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
918 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
919 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
920
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000921Tools
922
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +0000923- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
924 division operators as per PEP 238.
925
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000926Build
927
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +0000928- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
929 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
930 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
931 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
932
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +0000933C API
934
935- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +0000936
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +0000937- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
938 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
939 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check:
940
941 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
942 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
943 /* The conversion failed. */
944 }
945
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000946- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000947 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
948 module:
949
950 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000951
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000952 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
953 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000954
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000955 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
956 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000957
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000958 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
959
960 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
961
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000962- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000963 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
964 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
965 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +0000966
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000967New platforms
968
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +0000969- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
970 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
971 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
972 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
973 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000974
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000975Tests
976
977Windows
978
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +0000979- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
980 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
981 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
982 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +0000983 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
984 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
985 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
986 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
987 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +0000988
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000989- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +0000990 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
991
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000992
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000993What's New in Python 2.2a2?
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +0000994Release Date: 22-Aug-2001
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000995===========================
996
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000997Build
998
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +0000999- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
1000 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
1001
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00001002- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
1003 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
1004 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001005
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00001006- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
1007 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
1008 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
1009 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00001010
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001011- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
1012
1013- The `new' module is now statically linked.
1014
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00001015Tools
1016
1017- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00001018 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00001019 the module docstring for details.
1020
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00001021Tests
1022
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00001023- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001024 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
1025 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
1026 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00001027
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00001028- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
1029 Nick Mathewson.
1030
1031Core
1032
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001033- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
1034 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
1035 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
1036 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
1037 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
1038 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
1039 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
1040 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
1041
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00001042- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
1043 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
1044 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
1045 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
1046
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00001047- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
1048 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
1049 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
1050 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
1051 come a long way).
1052
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00001053- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
1054 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
1055 write filters for these warnings).
1056
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00001057- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
1058 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
1059 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
1060 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
1061 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
1062
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00001063- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
1064 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
1065 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
1066 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
1067 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
1068 older distribution.
1069
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00001070Library
1071
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00001072- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
1073 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00001074 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00001075
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00001076- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
1077 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
1078 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
1079
1080- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
1081
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001082- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
1083
1084- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
1085
1086- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
1087
1088- The `new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
1089
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00001090- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
1091
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00001092New platforms
1093
1094C API
1095
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00001096- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
1097 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
1098 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
1099 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
1100 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
1101 against buffer overruns.
1102
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00001103- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00001104 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
1105 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00001106 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
1107 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
1108 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
1109
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00001110- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
1111 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
1112 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
1113 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
1114 deprecated.
1115
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00001116Windows
1117
1118- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
1119 relevant is found.
1120
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00001121
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00001122What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Barry Warsawd970fe42001-10-25 21:53:30 +00001123Release date: 18-Jul-2001
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00001124===========================
1125
1126Core
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00001127
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00001128- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
1129 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
1130 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
1131 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
1132 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
1133 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
1134 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
1135 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
1136 incompapatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
1137 repaired.
1138
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00001139- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00001140 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00001141 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
1142 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
1143 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
1144 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
1145 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
1146 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
1147 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
1148 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
1149
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00001150- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
1151 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
1152 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
1153 leading BMO character).
1154
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00001155- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
1156 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
1157 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
1158
1159 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
1160 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
1161 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00001162
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00001163 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
1164 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
1165 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
1166 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
1167 for various simple to use conversions.
1168
1169 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
1170 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
1171
1172 Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description
1173 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
1174 uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email)
1175 base64 | string | string | base64 codec
Guido van Rossumc3415802001-06-06 13:30:54 +00001176 quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00001177 zlib | string | string | zlib compression
1178 hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec
1179 rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec
1180
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00001181- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
1182 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
1183 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00001184 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00001185 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00001186
1187 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00001188 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
1189 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
1190 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
1191 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
1192 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00001193 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
1194 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00001195
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00001196 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
1197 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
1198 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00001199 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00001200
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00001201- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
1202 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
1203 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
1204 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
1205 floating arithmetic,
1206
1207 x = 9007199254740992.0
1208 print long(x)
1209
1210 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
1211 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
1212 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
1213 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
1214 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
1215 functions are of good quality).
1216
1217 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
1218 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
1219 algorithms to break.
1220
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00001221- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
1222 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
1223 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
1224 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
1225 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
1226 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
1227 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
1228 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
1229 order.
1230
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00001231- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
1232 operation along the most common code paths.
1233
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00001234- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
1235 the same as dict.has_key(x).
1236
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00001237- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
1238 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
1239 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
1240 {}.update(UserDict())
1241
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00001242- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
1243 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
1244 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
1245 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
1246 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
1247 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
1248 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
1249 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
1250
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00001251- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
1252 arguments:
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00001253 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00001254 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
1255 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00001256 join() method of strings
1257 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00001258 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
1259 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00001260 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as
1261 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00001262
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00001263- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
1264 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
1265
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00001266- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
1267 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
1268
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00001269- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
1270 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
1271 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
1272 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
1273
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00001274- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
1275 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00001276 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00001277 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
1278 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00001279
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00001280- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
1281
1282
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00001283Library
1284
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00001285- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
1286 were added to the string module. These a locale-indenpendent
1287 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
1288 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
1289
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00001290- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
1291 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
1292
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00001293- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
1294 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
1295 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
1296 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
1297
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00001298- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
1299 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
1300 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
1301
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00001302- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
1303
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00001304- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
1305
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00001306- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
1307 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
1308 that are still imported into string.py).
1309
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00001310- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
1311
1312- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
1313 Now it does.
1314
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00001315- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
1316
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00001317- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
1318 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
1319 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
1320 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
1321 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00001322 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
1323 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00001324
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00001325- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
1326 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
1327 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
1328 'help(object)'.
1329
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00001330Tests
1331
1332- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
1333 comparison operators mutute the dicts randomly during comparison. This
1334 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
1335 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
1336
1337- New test_pprint.py verfies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00001338 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
1339 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00001340
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00001341C API
1342
1343- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
1344 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
1345
1346
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00001347======================================================================
1348
1349
Guido van Rossumffe13be2001-04-16 18:46:45 +00001350What's New in Python 2.1 (final)?
1351=================================
1352
1353We only changed a few things since the last release candidate, all in
1354Python library code:
1355
1356- A bug in the locale module was fixed that affected locales which
1357 define no grouping for numeric formatting.
1358
1359- A few bugs in the weakref module's implementations of weak
1360 dictionaries (WeakValueDictionary and WeakKeyDictionary) were fixed,
1361 and the test suite was updated to check for these bugs.
1362
1363- An old bug in the os.path.walk() function (introduced in Python
1364 2.0!) was fixed: a non-existent file would cause an exception
1365 instead of being ignored.
1366
1367- Fixed a few bugs in the new symtable module found by Neil Norwitz's
1368 PyChecker.
1369
1370
Guido van Rossum5b08f132001-04-16 02:05:23 +00001371What's New in Python 2.1c2?
1372===========================
Barry Warsaw11e89c72001-04-11 20:37:57 +00001373
Guido van Rossum5b08f132001-04-16 02:05:23 +00001374A flurry of small changes, and one showstopper fixed in the nick of
1375time made it necessary to release another release candidate. The list
1376here is the *complete* list of patches (except version updates):
Guido van Rossum4fb60362001-04-13 00:46:14 +00001377
Guido van Rossum5b08f132001-04-16 02:05:23 +00001378Core
Guido van Rossum4fb60362001-04-13 00:46:14 +00001379
Guido van Rossum5b08f132001-04-16 02:05:23 +00001380- Tim discovered a nasty bug in the dictionary code, caused by
1381 PyDict_Next() calling dict_resize(), and the GC code's use of
1382 PyDict_Next() violating an assumption in dict_items(). This was
1383 fixed with considerable amounts of band-aid, but the net effect is a
1384 saner and more robust implementation.
1385
1386- Made a bunch of symbols static that were accidentally global.
1387
1388Build and Ports
1389
1390- The setup.py script didn't check for a new enough version of zlib
1391 (1.1.3 is needed). Now it does.
1392
1393- Changed "make clean" target to also remove shared libraries.
1394
1395- Added a more general warning about the SGI Irix optimizer to README.
1396
1397Library
1398
1399- Fix a bug in urllib.basejoin("http://host", "../file.html") which
1400 omitted the slash between host and file.html.
1401
1402- The mailbox module's _Mailbox class contained a completely broken
1403 and undocumented seek() method. Ripped it out.
1404
1405- Fixed a bunch of typos in various library modules (urllib2, smtpd,
1406 sgmllib, netrc, chunk) found by Neil Norwitz's PyChecker.
1407
1408- Fixed a few last-minute bugs in unittest.
1409
1410Extensions
1411
1412- Reverted the patch to the OpenSSL code in socketmodule.c to support
1413 RAND_status() and the EGD, and the subsequent patch that tried to
1414 fix it for pre-0.9.5 versions; the problem with the patch is that on
1415 some systems it issues a warning whenever socket is imported, and
1416 that's unacceptable.
1417
1418Tests
1419
1420- Fixed the pickle tests to work with "import test.test_pickle".
1421
1422- Tweaked test_locale.py to actually run the test Windows.
1423
1424- In distutils/archive_util.py, call zipfile.ZipFile() with mode "w",
1425 not "wb" (which is not a valid mode at all).
1426
1427- Fix pstats browser crashes. Import readline if it exists to make
1428 the user interface nicer.
1429
1430- Add "import thread" to the top of test modules that import the
1431 threading module (test_asynchat and test_threadedtempfile). This
1432 prevents test failures caused by a broken threading module resulting
1433 from a previously caught failed import.
1434
1435- Changed test_asynchat.py to set the SO_REUSEADDR option; this was
1436 needed on some platforms (e.g. Solaris 8) when the tests are run
1437 twice in succession.
1438
1439- Skip rather than fail test_sunaudiodev if no audio device is found.
1440
1441
1442What's New in Python 2.1c1?
1443===========================
1444
1445This list was significantly updated when 2.1c2 was released; the 2.1c1
1446release didn't mention most changes that were actually part of 2.1c1:
1447
1448Legal
1449
1450- Copyright was assigned to the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and a
1451 PSF license (very similar to the CNRI license) was added.
1452
1453- The CNRI copyright notice was updated to include 2001.
1454
1455Core
Barry Warsaw11e89c72001-04-11 20:37:57 +00001456
Guido van Rossumc9932722001-04-12 02:31:27 +00001457- After a public outcry, assignment to __debug__ is no longer illegal;
1458 instead, a warning is issued. It will become illegal in 2.2.
1459
Guido van Rossum5b08f132001-04-16 02:05:23 +00001460- Fixed a core dump with "%#x" % 0, and changed the semantics so that
1461 "%#x" now always prepends "0x", even if the value is zero.
1462
1463- Fixed some nits in the bytecode compiler.
1464
1465- Fixed core dumps when calling certain kinds of non-functions.
1466
1467- Fixed various core dumps caused by reference count bugs.
1468
1469Build and Ports
1470
1471- Use INSTALL_SCRIPT to install script files.
1472
Guido van Rossum34d37dc2001-04-11 21:03:32 +00001473- New port: SCO Unixware 7, by Billy G. Allie.
1474
Guido van Rossum5b08f132001-04-16 02:05:23 +00001475- Updated RISCOS port.
1476
1477- Updated BeOS port and notes.
1478
1479- Various other porting problems resolved.
1480
1481Library
1482
1483- The TERMIOS and SOCKET modules are now truly obsolete and
1484 unnecessary. Their symbols are incorporated in the termios and
1485 socket modules.
1486
1487- Fixed some 64-bit bugs in pickle, cPickle, and struct, and added
1488 better tests for pickling.
1489
1490- threading: make Condition.wait() robust against KeyboardInterrupt.
1491
1492- zipfile: add support to zipfile to support opening an archive
1493 represented by an open file rather than a file name. Fix bug where
1494 the archive was not properly closed. Fixed a bug in this bugfix
1495 where flush() was called for a read-only file.
1496
1497- imputil: added an uninstall() method to the ImportManager.
1498
1499- Canvas: fixed bugs in lower() and tkraise() methods.
1500
1501- SocketServer: API change (added overridable close_request() method)
1502 so that the TCP server can explicitly close the request.
1503
1504- pstats: Eric Raymond added a simple interactive statistics browser,
1505 invoked when the module is run as a script.
1506
1507- locale: fixed a problem in format().
1508
1509- webbrowser: made it work when the BROWSER environment variable has a
1510 value like "/usr/bin/netscape". Made it auto-detect Konqueror for
1511 KDE 2. Fixed some other nits.
1512
1513- unittest: changes to allow using a different exception than
1514 AssertionError, and added a few more function aliases. Some other
1515 small changes.
1516
1517- urllib, urllib2: fixed redirect problems and a coupleof other nits.
1518
1519- asynchat: fixed a critical bug in asynchat that slipped through the
1520 2.1b2 release. Fixed another rare bug.
1521
1522- Fix some unqualified except: clauses (always a bad code example).
1523
1524XML
1525
1526- pyexpat: new API get_version_string().
1527
1528- Fixed some minidom bugs.
1529
1530Extensions
1531
1532- Fixed a core dump in _weakref. Removed the weakref.mapping()
1533 function (it adds nothing to the API).
1534
1535- Rationalized the use of header files in the readline module, to make
1536 it compile (albeit with some warnings) with the very recent readline
1537 4.2, without breaking for earlier versions.
1538
1539- Hopefully fixed a buffering problem in linuxaudiodev.
1540
1541- Attempted a fix to make the OpenSSL support in the socket module
1542 work again with pre-0.9.5 versions of OpenSSL.
1543
1544Tests
1545
1546- Added a test case for asynchat and asyncore.
1547
1548- Removed coupling between tests where one test failing could break
1549 another.
1550
1551Tools
1552
1553- Ping added an interactive help browser to pydoc, fixed some nits
1554 in the rest of the pydoc code, and added some features to his
1555 inspect module.
1556
1557- An updated python-mode.el version 4.1 which integrates Ken
1558 Manheimer's pdbtrack.el. This makes debugging Python code via pdb
1559 much nicer in XEmacs and Emacs. When stepping through your program
1560 with pdb, in either the shell window or the *Python* window, the
1561 source file and line will be tracked by an arrow. Very cool!
1562
1563- IDLE: syntax warnings in interactive mode are changed into errors.
1564
1565- Some improvements to Tools/webchecker (ignore some more URL types,
Tim Peters0e57abf2001-05-02 07:39:38 +00001566 follow some more links).
Guido van Rossum5b08f132001-04-16 02:05:23 +00001567
1568- Brought the Tools/compiler package up to date.
Guido van Rossum34d37dc2001-04-11 21:03:32 +00001569
Barry Warsaw11e89c72001-04-11 20:37:57 +00001570
Martin v. Löwis0411f6f2001-03-21 08:01:39 +00001571What's New in Python 2.1 beta 2?
1572================================
1573
Guido van Rossum053ae352001-03-22 14:17:21 +00001574(Unlisted are many fixed bugs, more documentation, etc.)
1575
Martin v. Löwis0411f6f2001-03-21 08:01:39 +00001576Core language, builtins, and interpreter
1577
Guido van Rossum053ae352001-03-22 14:17:21 +00001578- The nested scopes work (enabled by "from __future__ import
1579 nested_scopes") is completed; in particular, the future now extends
1580 into code executed through exec, eval() and execfile(), and into the
1581 interactive interpreter.
1582
1583- When calling a base class method (e.g. BaseClass.__init__(self)),
1584 this is now allowed even if self is not strictly spoken a class
1585 instance (e.g. when using metaclasses or the Don Beaudry hook).
1586
1587- Slice objects are now comparable but not hashable; this prevents
1588 dict[:] from being accepted but meaningless.
1589
1590- Complex division is now calculated using less braindead algorithms.
1591 This doesn't change semantics except it's more likely to give useful
1592 results in extreme cases. Complex repr() now uses full precision
1593 like float repr().
1594
1595- sgmllib.py now calls handle_decl() for simple <!...> declarations.
1596
Jeremy Hyltonf626db72001-03-23 14:18:27 +00001597- It is illegal to assign to the name __debug__, which is set when the
1598 interpreter starts. It is effectively a compile-time constant.
1599
1600- A warning will be issued if a global statement for a variable
1601 follows a use or assignment of that variable.
1602
Martin v. Löwis0411f6f2001-03-21 08:01:39 +00001603Standard library
1604
Guido van Rossum053ae352001-03-22 14:17:21 +00001605- unittest.py, a unit testing framework by Steve Purcell (PyUNIT,
1606 inspired by JUnit), is now part of the standard library. You now
1607 have a choice of two testing frameworks: unittest requires you to
1608 write testcases as separate code, doctest gathers them from
1609 docstrings. Both approaches have their advantages and
1610 disadvantages.
1611
1612- A new module Tix was added, which wraps the Tix extension library
1613 for Tk. With that module, it is not necessary to statically link
1614 Tix with _tkinter, since Tix will be loaded with Tcl's "package
1615 require" command. See Demo/tix/.
1616
1617- tzparse.py is now obsolete.
1618
1619- In gzip.py, the seek() and tell() methods are removed -- they were
1620 non-functional anyway, and it's better if callers can test for their
1621 existence with hasattr().
1622
1623Python/C API
1624
1625- PyDict_Next(): it is now safe to call PyDict_SetItem() with a key
1626 that's already in the dictionary during a PyDict_Next() iteration.
1627 This used to fail occasionally when a dictionary resize operation
1628 could be triggered that would rehash all the keys. All other
1629 modifications to the dictionary are still off-limits during a
1630 PyDict_Next() iteration!
1631
1632- New extended APIs related to passing compiler variables around.
1633
1634- New abstract APIs PyObject_IsInstance(), PyObject_IsSubclass()
1635 implement isinstance() and issubclass().
1636
1637- Py_BuildValue() now has a "D" conversion to create a Python complex
1638 number from a Py_complex C value.
Martin v. Löwis0411f6f2001-03-21 08:01:39 +00001639
Fred Drake4e262a92001-03-22 18:26:47 +00001640- Extensions types which support weak references must now set the
1641 field allocated for the weak reference machinery to NULL themselves;
1642 this is done to avoid the cost of checking each object for having a
1643 weakly referencable type in PyObject_INIT(), since most types are
1644 not weakly referencable.
1645
Jeremy Hyltonf626db72001-03-23 14:18:27 +00001646- PyFrame_FastToLocals() and PyFrame_LocalsToFast() copy bindings for
1647 free variables and cell variables to and from the frame's f_locals.
1648
1649- Variants of several functions defined in pythonrun.h have been added
1650 to support the nested_scopes future statement. The variants all end
1651 in Flags and take an extra argument, a PyCompilerFlags *; examples:
1652 PyRun_AnyFileExFlags(), PyRun_InteractiveLoopFlags(). These
1653 variants may be removed in Python 2.2, when nested scopes are
Tim Peters0e57abf2001-05-02 07:39:38 +00001654 mandatory.
Jeremy Hyltonf626db72001-03-23 14:18:27 +00001655
Andrew M. Kuchling8e9972c2001-03-22 15:42:08 +00001656Distutils
1657
1658- the sdist command now writes a PKG-INFO file, as described in PEP 241,
1659 into the release tree.
1660
Tim Peters0e57abf2001-05-02 07:39:38 +00001661- several enhancements to the bdist_wininst command from Thomas Heller
Andrew M. Kuchling8e9972c2001-03-22 15:42:08 +00001662 (an uninstaller, more customization of the installer's display)
1663
1664- from Jack Jansen: added Mac-specific code to generate a dialog for
1665 users to specify the command-line (because providing a command-line with
Tim Peters0e57abf2001-05-02 07:39:38 +00001666 MacPython is awkward). Jack also made various fixes for the Mac
Andrew M. Kuchling8e9972c2001-03-22 15:42:08 +00001667 and the Metrowerks compiler.
Tim Peters0e57abf2001-05-02 07:39:38 +00001668
1669- added 'platforms' and 'keywords' to the set of metadata that can be
1670 specified for a distribution.
Andrew M. Kuchling8e9972c2001-03-22 15:42:08 +00001671
1672- applied patches from Jason Tishler to make the compiler class work with
1673 Cygwin.
1674
1675
Tim Peters2fe289a2001-03-01 22:19:38 +00001676What's New in Python 2.1 beta 1?
1677================================
Tim Petersd66595f2001-02-04 03:09:53 +00001678
1679Core language, builtins, and interpreter
1680
Guido van Rossum9d0fbde2001-03-02 14:00:32 +00001681- Following an outcry from the community about the amount of code
1682 broken by the nested scopes feature introduced in 2.1a2, we decided
1683 to make this feature optional, and to wait until Python 2.2 (or at
1684 least 6 months) to make it standard. The option can be enabled on a
1685 per-module basis by adding "from __future__ import nested_scopes" at
1686 the beginning of a module (before any other statements, but after
1687 comments and an optional docstring). See PEP 236 (Back to the
1688 __future__) for a description of the __future__ statement. PEP 227
1689 (Statically Nested Scopes) has been updated to reflect this change,
1690 and to clarify the semantics in a number of endcases.
1691
1692- The nested scopes code, when enabled, has been hardened, and most
1693 bugs and memory leaks in it have been fixed.
1694
1695- Compile-time warnings are now generated for a number of conditions
1696 that will break or change in meaning when nested scopes are enabled:
1697
1698 - Using "from...import *" or "exec" without in-clause in a function
1699 scope that also defines a lambda or nested function with one or
1700 more free (non-local) variables. The presence of the import* or
1701 bare exec makes it impossible for the compiler to determine the
1702 exact set of local variables in the outer scope, which makes it
1703 impossible to determine the bindings for free variables in the
1704 inner scope. To avoid the warning about import *, change it into
1705 an import of explicitly name object, or move the import* statement
1706 to the global scope; to avoid the warning about bare exec, use
1707 exec...in... (a good idea anyway -- there's a possibility that
1708 bare exec will be deprecated in the future).
1709
1710 - Use of a global variable in a nested scope with the same name as a
1711 local variable in a surrounding scope. This will change in
1712 meaning with nested scopes: the name in the inner scope will
1713 reference the variable in the outer scope rather than the global
1714 of the same name. To avoid the warning, either rename the outer
1715 variable, or use a global statement in the inner function.
1716
Neil Schemenauera35c6882001-02-27 04:45:05 +00001717- An optional object allocator has been included. This allocator is
1718 optimized for Python objects and should be faster and use less memory
1719 than the standard system allocator. It is not enabled by default
1720 because of possible thread safety problems. The allocator is only
1721 protected by the Python interpreter lock and it is possible that some
1722 extension modules require a thread safe allocator. The object
1723 allocator can be enabled by providing the "--with-pymalloc" option to
1724 configure.
1725
Tim Petersd66595f2001-02-04 03:09:53 +00001726Standard library
1727
Martin v. Löwis2a5130e2001-02-27 04:21:58 +00001728- pyexpat now detects the expat version if expat.h defines it. A
1729 number of additional handlers are provided, which are only available
1730 since expat 1.95. In addition, the methods SetParamEntityParsing and
1731 GetInputContext of Parser objects are available with 1.95.x
1732 only. Parser objects now provide the ordered_attributes and
1733 specified_attributes attributes. A new module expat.model was added,
1734 which offers a number of additional constants if 1.95.x is used.
1735
1736- xml.dom offers the new functions registerDOMImplementation and
1737 getDOMImplementation.
1738
1739- xml.dom.minidom offers a toprettyxml method. A number of DOM
1740 conformance issues have been resolved. In particular, Element now
1741 has an hasAttributes method, and the handling of namespaces was
1742 improved.
1743
Andrew M. Kuchlingd6a1d792001-02-28 21:05:42 +00001744- Ka-Ping Yee contributed two new modules: inspect.py, a module for
1745 getting information about live Python code, and pydoc.py, a module
1746 for interactively converting docstrings to HTML or text.
1747 Tools/scripts/pydoc, which is now automatically installed into
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +00001748 <prefix>/bin, uses pydoc.py to display documentation; try running
Guido van Rossume3955a82001-03-02 14:05:59 +00001749 "pydoc -h" for instructions. "pydoc -g" pops up a small GUI that
1750 lets you browse the module docstrings using a web browser.
Andrew M. Kuchlingd6a1d792001-02-28 21:05:42 +00001751
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +00001752- New library module difflib.py, primarily packaging the SequenceMatcher
1753 class at the heart of the popular ndiff.py file-comparison tool.
1754
1755- doctest.py (a framework for verifying Python code examples in docstrings)
1756 is now part of the std library.
1757
Tim Petersd66595f2001-02-04 03:09:53 +00001758Windows changes
1759
Guido van Rossume3955a82001-03-02 14:05:59 +00001760- A new entry in the Start menu, "Module Docs", runs "pydoc -g" -- a
1761 small GUI that lets you browse the module docstrings using your
1762 default web browser.
1763
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +00001764- Import is now case-sensitive. PEP 235 (Import on Case-Insensitive
1765 Platforms) is implemented. See
1766
1767 http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0235.html
1768
1769 for full details, especially the "Current Lower-Left Semantics" section.
1770 The new Windows import rules are simpler than before:
1771
1772 A. If the PYTHONCASEOK environment variable exists, same as
1773 before: silently accept the first case-insensitive match of any
1774 kind; raise ImportError if none found.
1775
1776 B. Else search sys.path for the first case-sensitive match; raise
1777 ImportError if none found.
1778
1779 The same rules have been implented on other platforms with case-
1780 insensitive but case-preserving filesystems too (including Cygwin, and
1781 several flavors of Macintosh operating systems).
Tim Petersd66595f2001-02-04 03:09:53 +00001782
Tim Peters25a9ce32001-02-19 07:06:36 +00001783- winsound module: Under Win9x, winsound.Beep() now attempts to simulate
1784 what it's supposed to do (and does do under NT and 2000) via direct
1785 port manipulation. It's unknown whether this will work on all systems,
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +00001786 but it does work on my Win98SE systems now and was known to be useless on
Tim Peters25a9ce32001-02-19 07:06:36 +00001787 all Win9x systems before.
1788
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +00001789- Build: Subproject _test (effectively) renamed to _testcapi.
1790
Tim Peters2fe289a2001-03-01 22:19:38 +00001791New platforms
1792
1793- 2.1 should compile and run out of the box under MacOS X, even using HFS+.
1794 Thanks to Steven Majewski!
1795
1796- 2.1 should compile and run out of the box on Cygwin. Thanks to Jason
1797 Tishler!
1798
Guido van Rossum9089b272001-03-02 06:49:50 +00001799- 2.1 contains new files and patches for RISCOS, thanks to Dietmar
1800 Schwertberger! See RISCOS/README for more information -- it seems
1801 that because of the bizarre filename conventions on RISCOS, no port
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00001802 to that platform is easy.
Guido van Rossum9089b272001-03-02 06:49:50 +00001803
Tim Peters25a9ce32001-02-19 07:06:36 +00001804
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +00001805What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 2?
1806=================================
Tim Peters40ead762001-01-27 05:35:26 +00001807
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +00001808Core language, builtins, and interpreter
1809
Jeremy Hylton4589bd82001-02-01 20:38:45 +00001810- Scopes nest. If a name is used in a function or class, but is not
1811 local, the definition in the nearest enclosing function scope will
1812 be used. One consequence of this change is that lambda statements
1813 could reference variables in the namespaces where the lambda is
1814 defined. In some unusual cases, this change will break code.
1815
1816 In all previous version of Python, names were resolved in exactly
1817 three namespaces -- the local namespace, the global namespace, and
Jeremy Hyltond6b1cf92001-02-02 20:06:28 +00001818 the builtin namespace. According to this old definition, if a
Jeremy Hylton4589bd82001-02-01 20:38:45 +00001819 function A is defined within a function B, the names bound in B are
1820 not visible in A. The new rules make names bound in B visible in A,
1821 unless A contains a name binding that hides the binding in B.
1822
1823 Section 4.1 of the reference manual describes the new scoping rules
1824 in detail. The test script in Lib/test/test_scope.py demonstrates
1825 some of the effects of the change.
1826
1827 The new rules will cause existing code to break if it defines nested
1828 functions where an outer function has local variables with the same
1829 name as globals or builtins used by the inner function. Example:
1830
1831 def munge(str):
1832 def helper(x):
1833 return str(x)
1834 if type(str) != type(''):
1835 str = helper(str)
1836 return str.strip()
1837
1838 Under the old rules, the name str in helper() is bound to the
1839 builtin function str(). Under the new rules, it will be bound to
1840 the argument named str and an error will occur when helper() is
1841 called.
1842
Jeremy Hyltond6b1cf92001-02-02 20:06:28 +00001843- The compiler will report a SyntaxError if "from ... import *" occurs
1844 in a function or class scope. The language reference has documented
1845 that this case is illegal, but the compiler never checked for it.
1846 The recent introduction of nested scope makes the meaning of this
1847 form of name binding ambiguous. In a future release, the compiler
1848 may allow this form when there is no possibility of ambiguity.
1849
Tim Peters40ead762001-01-27 05:35:26 +00001850- repr(string) is easier to read, now using hex escapes instead of octal,
1851 and using \t, \n and \r instead of \011, \012 and \015 (respectively):
1852
1853 >>> "\texample \r\n" + chr(0) + chr(255)
1854 '\texample \r\n\x00\xff' # in 2.1
1855 '\011example \015\012\000\377' # in 2.0
1856
Moshe Zadka6af0ce02001-01-29 06:41:00 +00001857- Functions are now compared and hashed by identity, not by value, since
1858 the func_code attribute is writable.
1859
Fred Drakefb9d7122001-02-01 20:00:40 +00001860- Weak references (PEP 205) have been added. This involves a few
1861 changes in the core, an extension module (_weakref), and a Python
1862 module (weakref). The weakref module is the public interface. It
1863 includes support for "explicit" weak references, proxy objects, and
1864 mappings with weakly held values.
1865
Jeremy Hylton0072d5a2001-02-01 22:53:15 +00001866- A 'continue' statement can now appear in a try block within the body
1867 of a loop. It is still not possible to use continue in a finally
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +00001868 clause.
Jeremy Hylton0072d5a2001-02-01 22:53:15 +00001869
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +00001870Standard library
1871
Barry Warsaw30dbd142001-01-31 22:14:01 +00001872- mailbox.py now has a new class, PortableUnixMailbox which is
1873 identical to UnixMailbox but uses a more portable scheme for
1874 determining From_ separators. Also, the constructors for all the
1875 classes in this module have a new optional `factory' argument, which
1876 is a callable used when new message classes must be instantiated by
1877 the next() method.
1878
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +00001879- random.py is now self-contained, and offers all the functionality of
1880 the now-deprecated whrandom.py. See the docs for details. random.py
1881 also supports new functions getstate() and setstate(), for saving
Tim Petersd52269b2001-01-25 06:23:18 +00001882 and restoring the internal state of the generator; and jumpahead(n),
1883 for quickly forcing the internal state to be the same as if n calls to
1884 random() had been made. The latter is particularly useful for multi-
1885 threaded programs, creating one instance of the random.Random() class for
1886 each thread, then using .jumpahead() to force each instance to use a
1887 non-overlapping segment of the full period.
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +00001888
Tim Peters0de88fc2001-02-01 04:59:18 +00001889- random.py's seed() function is new. For bit-for-bit compatibility with
1890 prior releases, use the whseed function instead. The new seed function
1891 addresses two problems: (1) The old function couldn't produce more than
1892 about 2**24 distinct internal states; the new one about 2**45 (the best
1893 that can be done in the Wichmann-Hill generator). (2) The old function
1894 sometimes produced identical internal states when passed distinct
1895 integers, and there was no simple way to predict when that would happen;
1896 the new one guarantees to produce distinct internal states for all
1897 arguments in [0, 27814431486576L).
1898
Jeremy Hylton4c4fda02001-02-02 03:29:24 +00001899- The socket module now supports raw packets on Linux. The socket
1900 family is AF_PACKET.
1901
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +00001902- test_capi.py is a start at running tests of the Python C API. The tests
1903 are implemented by the new Modules/_testmodule.c.
1904
Jeremy Hyltond6b1cf92001-02-02 20:06:28 +00001905- A new extension module, _symtable, provides provisional access to the
1906 internal symbol table used by the Python compiler. A higher-level
1907 interface will be added on top of _symtable in a future release.
1908
Andrew M. Kuchlingdebc3522001-02-22 15:53:21 +00001909- Removed the obsolete soundex module.
1910
Martin v. Löwis2a5130e2001-02-27 04:21:58 +00001911- xml.dom.minidom now uses the standard DOM exceptions. Node supports
1912 the isSameNode method; NamedNodeMap the get method.
1913
1914- xml.sax.expatreader supports the lexical handler property; it
1915 generates comment, startCDATA, and endCDATA events.
1916
Tim Petersee826f82001-01-31 19:39:44 +00001917Windows changes
1918
1919- Build procedure: the zlib project is built in a different way that
1920 ensures the zlib header files used can no longer get out of synch with
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +00001921 the zlib binary used. See PCbuild\readme.txt for details. Your old
1922 zlib-related directories can be deleted; you'll need to download fresh
1923 source for zlib and unpack it into a new directory.
Tim Petersee826f82001-01-31 19:39:44 +00001924
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +00001925- Build: New subproject _test for the benefit of test_capi.py (see above).
1926
Tim Petersb16c56f2001-02-02 21:24:51 +00001927- Build: New subproject _symtable, for new DLL _symtable.pyd (a nascent
1928 interface to some Python compiler internals).
1929
1930- Build: Subproject ucnhash is gone, since the code was folded into the
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +00001931 unicodedata subproject.
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +00001932
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00001933What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1?
1934=================================
1935
1936Core language, builtins, and interpreter
1937
Marc-André Lemburgebb195b2001-01-20 10:34:52 +00001938- There is a new Unicode companion to the PyObject_Str() API
1939 called PyObject_Unicode(). It behaves in the same way as the
1940 former, but assures that the returned value is an Unicode object
1941 (applying the usual coercion if necessary).
Marc-André Lemburgad7c98e2001-01-17 17:09:53 +00001942
Guido van Rossumf98eda02001-01-17 15:54:45 +00001943- The comparison operators support "rich comparison overloading" (PEP
1944 207). C extension types can provide a rich comparison function in
1945 the new tp_richcompare slot in the type object. The cmp() function
1946 and the C function PyObject_Compare() first try the new rich
1947 comparison operators before trying the old 3-way comparison. There
1948 is also a new C API PyObject_RichCompare() (which also falls back on
1949 the old 3-way comparison, but does not constrain the outcome of the
1950 rich comparison to a Boolean result).
1951
1952 The rich comparison function takes two objects (at least one of
1953 which is guaranteed to have the type that provided the function) and
1954 an integer indicating the opcode, which can be Py_LT, Py_LE, Py_EQ,
1955 Py_NE, Py_GT, Py_GE (for <, <=, ==, !=, >, >=), and returns a Python
1956 object, which may be NotImplemented (in which case the tp_compare
1957 slot function is used as a fallback, if defined).
1958
1959 Classes can overload individual comparison operators by defining one
1960 or more of the methods__lt__, __le__, __eq__, __ne__, __gt__,
Guido van Rossuma88479f2001-01-18 14:28:08 +00001961 __ge__. There are no explicit "reflected argument" versions of
1962 these; instead, __lt__ and __gt__ are each other's reflection,
1963 likewise for__le__ and __ge__; __eq__ and __ne__ are their own
1964 reflection (similar at the C level). No other implications are
1965 made; in particular, Python does not assume that == is the Boolean
1966 inverse of !=, or that < is the Boolean inverse of >=. This makes
1967 it possible to define types with partial orderings.
Guido van Rossumf98eda02001-01-17 15:54:45 +00001968
1969 Classes or types that want to implement (in)equality tests but not
1970 the ordering operators (i.e. unordered types) should implement ==
1971 and !=, and raise an error for the ordering operators.
1972
Guido van Rossuma88479f2001-01-18 14:28:08 +00001973 It is possible to define types whose rich comparison results are not
Guido van Rossumf98eda02001-01-17 15:54:45 +00001974 Boolean; e.g. a matrix type might want to return a matrix of bits
1975 for A < B, giving elementwise comparisons. Such types should ensure
1976 that any interpretation of their value in a Boolean context raises
1977 an exception, e.g. by defining __nonzero__ (or the tp_nonzero slot
1978 at the C level) to always raise an exception.
1979
Guido van Rossuma88479f2001-01-18 14:28:08 +00001980- Complex numbers use rich comparisons to define == and != but raise
1981 an exception for <, <=, > and >=. Unfortunately, this also means
1982 that cmp() of two complex numbers raises an exception when the two
1983 numbers differ. Since it is not mathematically meaningful to compare
1984 complex numbers except for equality, I hope that this doesn't break
1985 too much code.
1986
Tim Peters3389f192001-02-18 08:48:49 +00001987- The outcome of comparing non-numeric objects of different types is
Tim Peters14495852001-02-18 08:28:33 +00001988 not defined by the language, other than that it's arbitrary but
1989 consistent (see the Reference Manual). An implementation detail changed
1990 in 2.1a1 such that None now compares less than any other object. Code
1991 relying on this new behavior (like code that relied on the previous
1992 behavior) does so at its own risk.
1993
Barry Warsaw573b5412001-01-15 20:43:18 +00001994- Functions and methods now support getting and setting arbitrarily
1995 named attributes (PEP 232). Functions have a new __dict__
1996 (a.k.a. func_dict) which hold the function attributes. Methods get
1997 and set attributes on their underlying im_func. It is a TypeError
1998 to set an attribute on a bound method.
1999
Guido van Rossum051e3352001-01-15 19:11:10 +00002000- The xrange() object implementation has been improved so that
2001 xrange(sys.maxint) can be used on 64-bit platforms. There's still a
2002 limitation that in this case len(xrange(sys.maxint)) can't be
2003 calculated, but the common idiom "for i in xrange(sys.maxint)" will
2004 work fine as long as the index i doesn't actually reach 2**31.
2005 (Python uses regular ints for sequence and string indices; fixing
2006 that is much more work.)
2007
Guido van Rossum1cc8f832001-01-12 16:25:08 +00002008- Two changes to from...import:
2009
Guido van Rossumba381232001-02-03 15:06:40 +00002010 1) "from M import X" now works even if (after loading module M)
2011 sys.modules['M'] is not a real module; it's basically a getattr()
2012 operation with AttributeError exceptions changed into ImportError.
Guido van Rossum1cc8f832001-01-12 16:25:08 +00002013
2014 2) "from M import *" now looks for M.__all__ to decide which names to
2015 import; if M.__all__ doesn't exist, it uses M.__dict__.keys() but
2016 filters out names starting with '_' as before. Whether or not
2017 __all__ exists, there's no restriction on the type of M.
2018
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00002019- File objects have a new method, xreadlines(). This is the fastest
2020 way to iterate over all lines in a file:
2021
2022 for line in file.xreadlines():
2023 ...do something to line...
2024
2025 See the xreadlines module (mentioned below) for how to do this for
2026 other file-like objects.
2027
2028- Even if you don't use file.xreadlines(), you may expect a speedup on
2029 line-by-line input. The file.readline() method has been optimized
Tim Petersf29b64d2001-01-15 06:33:19 +00002030 quite a bit in platform-specific ways: on systems (like Linux) that
2031 support flockfile(), getc_unlocked(), and funlockfile(), those are
2032 used by default. On systems (like Windows) without getc_unlocked(),
2033 a complicated (but still thread-safe) method using fgets() is used by
2034 default.
2035
Tim Petersd52269b2001-01-25 06:23:18 +00002036 You can force use of the fgets() method by #define'ing
2037 USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE at build time (it may be faster than
Tim Petersf29b64d2001-01-15 06:33:19 +00002038 getc_unlocked()).
2039
Tim Petersd52269b2001-01-25 06:23:18 +00002040 You can force fgets() not to be used by #define'ing
2041 DONT_USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE (this is the first thing to try if std test
Tim Petersf29b64d2001-01-15 06:33:19 +00002042 test_bufio.py fails -- and let us know if it does!).
2043
2044- In addition, the fileinput module, while still slower than the other
2045 methods on most platforms, has been sped up too, by using
2046 file.readlines(sizehint).
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00002047
2048- Support for run-time warnings has been added, including a new
2049 command line option (-W) to specify the disposition of warnings.
2050 See the description of the warnings module below.
2051
2052- Extensive changes have been made to the coercion code. This mostly
2053 affects extension modules (which can now implement mixed-type
2054 numerical operators without having to use coercion), but
2055 occasionally, in boundary cases the coercion semantics have changed
2056 subtly. Since this was a terrible gray area of the language, this
Guido van Rossumae72d872001-01-11 15:00:14 +00002057 is considered an improvement. Also note that __rcmp__ is no longer
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00002058 supported -- instead of calling __rcmp__, __cmp__ is called with
Guido van Rossuma88479f2001-01-18 14:28:08 +00002059 reflected arguments.
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00002060
Guido van Rossumf98eda02001-01-17 15:54:45 +00002061- In connection with the coercion changes, a new built-in singleton
2062 object, NotImplemented is defined. This can be returned for
2063 operations that wish to indicate they are not implemented for a
2064 particular combination of arguments. From C, this is
2065 Py_NotImplemented.
2066
Martin v. Löwisbe4c0f52001-01-04 20:30:56 +00002067- The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even
2068 if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing
2069
Martin v. Löwise214baa2001-02-04 22:37:56 +00002070import imp,sys,string
2071magic = string.join(["\\x%.2x" % ord(c) for c in imp.get_magic()],"")
2072reg = ':pyc:M::%s::%s:' % (magic, sys.executable)
2073open("/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register","wb").write(reg)
Martin v. Löwisbe4c0f52001-01-04 20:30:56 +00002074
2075 any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument
2076 to execve(2)).
2077
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +00002078- %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002079 character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign,
2080 and raised an error if the value of the long was too large
2081 to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and
2082 only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent
2083 across platforms (because the size of an int varies across
2084 platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example:
2085
2086 >>> "%x" % -0x42L
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +00002087 '-42' # in 2.1
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002088 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines
2089 >>> hex(-0x42L)
2090 '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python
2091
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +00002092 The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains
2093 the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised
2094 an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int).
2095
2096 %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed
2097 and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long
2098 formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to
2099 fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted
2100 via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int.
2101
Guido van Rossum3661d392000-12-12 22:10:31 +00002102- Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes
2103 an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of
2104 a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a
2105 dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one
2106 item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time;
2107 using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time.
2108
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +00002109Standard library
2110
Thomas Woutersfe385252001-01-19 23:16:56 +00002111- In the time module, the time argument to the functions strftime,
2112 localtime, gmtime, asctime and ctime is now optional, defaulting to
2113 the current time (in the local timezone).
2114
Guido van Rossumda91f222001-01-15 16:36:08 +00002115- The ftplib module now defaults to passive mode, which is deemed a
2116 more useful default given that clients are often inside firewalls
2117 these days. Note that this could break if ftplib is used to connect
2118 to a *server* that is inside a firewall, from outside; this is
2119 expected to be a very rare situation. To fix that, you can call
2120 ftp.set_pasv(0).
2121
Martin v. Löwis10a27872001-01-13 09:54:41 +00002122- The module site now treats .pth files not only for path configuration,
2123 but also supports extensions to the initialization code: Lines starting
2124 with import are executed.
2125
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00002126- There's a new module, warnings, which implements a mechanism for
2127 issuing and filtering warnings. There are some new built-in
2128 exceptions that serve as warning categories, and a new command line
2129 option, -W, to control warnings (e.g. -Wi ignores all warnings, -We
2130 turns warnings into errors). warnings.warn(message[, category])
2131 issues a warning message; this can also be called from C as
2132 PyErr_Warn(category, message).
2133
2134- A new module xreadlines was added. This exports a single factory
2135 function, xreadlines(). The intention is that this code is the
2136 absolutely fastest way to iterate over all lines in an open
2137 file(-like) object:
2138
2139 import xreadlines
2140 for line in xreadlines.xreadlines(file):
2141 ...do something to line...
2142
2143 This is equivalent to the previous the speed record holder using
2144 file.readlines(sizehint). Note that if file is a real file object
2145 (as opposed to a file-like object), this is equivalent:
2146
2147 for line in file.xreadlines():
2148 ...do something to line...
2149
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +00002150- The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left,
2151 bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort
2152 are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right
2153 and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element
2154 compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the
2155 XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the
Tim Peters742bb6f2001-01-05 08:05:32 +00002156 right. Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should
2157 continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort").
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +00002158
Andrew M. Kuchlingf6f3a892001-01-13 14:53:34 +00002159- The new curses.panel module wraps the panel library that forms part
2160 of SYSV curses and ncurses. Contributed by Thomas Gellekum.
2161
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00002162- The SocketServer module now sets the allow_reuse_address flag by
2163 default in the TCPServer class.
2164
2165- A new function, sys._getframe(), returns the stack frame pointer of
2166 the caller. This is intended only as a building block for
2167 higher-level mechanisms such as string interpolation.
2168
Martin v. Löwis2a5130e2001-02-27 04:21:58 +00002169- The pyexpat module supports a number of new handlers, which are
2170 available only in expat 1.2. If invocation of a callback fails, it
2171 will report an additional frame in the traceback. Parser objects
2172 participate now in garbage collection. If expat reports an unknown
2173 encoding, pyexpat will try to use a Python codec; that works only
2174 for single-byte charsets. The parser type objects is exposed as
2175 XMLParserObject.
2176
2177- xml.dom now offers standard definitions for symbolic node type and
2178 exception code constants, and a hierarchy of DOM exceptions. minidom
2179 was adjusted to use them.
2180
2181- The conformance of xml.dom.minidom to the DOM specification was
2182 improved. It detects a number of additional error cases; the
2183 previous/next relationship works even when the tree is modified;
2184 Node supports the normalize() method; NamedNodeMap, DocumentType and
2185 DOMImplementation classes were added; Element supports the
2186 hasAttribute and hasAttributeNS methods; and Text supports the splitText
2187 method.
2188
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00002189Build issues
2190
Guido van Rossum1e33bdc2001-01-23 03:17:00 +00002191- For Unix (and Unix-compatible) builds, configuration and building of
2192 extension modules is now greatly automated. Rather than having to
2193 edit the Modules/Setup file to indicate which modules should be
2194 built and where their include files and libraries are, a
2195 distutils-based setup.py script now takes care of building most
2196 extension modules. All extension modules built this way are built
2197 as shared libraries. Only a few modules that must be linked
2198 statically are still listed in the Setup file; you won't need to
2199 edit their configuration.
2200
2201- Python should now build out of the box on Cygwin. If it doesn't,
2202 mail to Jason Tishler (jlt63 at users.sourceforge.net).
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00002203
2204- Python now always uses its own (renamed) implementation of getopt()
2205 -- there's too much variation among C library getopt()
2206 implementations.
2207
2208- C++ compilers are better supported; the CXX macro is always set to a
2209 C++ compiler if one is found.
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +00002210
Tim Petersd92dfe02000-12-12 01:18:41 +00002211Windows changes
2212
2213- select module: By default under Windows, a select() call
2214 can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts
2215 this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than
2216 that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE
2217 and recompile Python from source).
2218
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00002219- Support for Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 is gone. The Lib/dos-8x3
2220 subdirectory is no more!
2221
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002222
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002223What's New in Python 2.0?
Fred Drake1a640502000-10-16 20:27:25 +00002224=========================
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002225
Guido van Rossum8ed602b2000-09-01 22:34:33 +00002226Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6. Older
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002227changes are in the file HISTORY. If you are making the jump directly
2228from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the
2229HISTORY file! Many important changes listed there.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +00002230
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002231Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is
2232the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
2233http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/.
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +00002234
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002235--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
Guido van Rossum437cfe81999-04-08 20:17:57 +00002236
2237======================================================================
2238
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002239What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)?
2240==============================================
2241
2242Standard library
2243
2244- The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to
2245 register pickle support for extension types, not for classes.
2246 pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class.
2247
2248- Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented
2249 it from finding an existing .mo file.
2250
2251- Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib.
2252
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +00002253- The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of
2254 underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases. Whether Python
2255 used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform-
2256 dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE
2257 on underflow).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002258
2259- Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not
2260 at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to
2261 extend past the end of the file.
2262
2263- Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on
2264 Windows. The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of
2265 interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp).
2266
2267- Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP
2268 redirect response.
2269
2270- Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was
2271 removed from util. Fixed the installer used when an external zip
2272 program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this
2273 installer is in Misc/distutils. check_lib() was modified to behave
2274 more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter. The
2275 test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to
2276 use both normcase() and normpath().
2277
Jeremy Hyltond867a2c2000-10-16 20:41:38 +00002278- Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom,
2279 pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002280
2281- The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with
2282 -l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as
2283 garbage but not freed by the garbage collector.
2284
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +00002285- The regression test for the math module was changed to test
2286 exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode. Python
2287 cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms,
2288 so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and
2289 may fail on your platform.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002290
2291Internals
2292
2293- PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused
2294 test_sre to fail.
2295
2296Build issues
2297
2298- Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and
2299 -Wstrict-prototypes. Users compiling Python with GCC should see
2300 exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +00002301 --with-pydebug flag. The expected warning is for getopt() in
Tim Petersadfb94f2000-10-16 20:51:33 +00002302 Modules/main.c. This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002303
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002304- Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002305
2306Tools and other miscellany
2307
2308- The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new
2309 language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list
2310 comprehensions, and augmented assignments. The new compiler should
2311 also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will
2312 always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002313 under.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002314
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002315What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)?
2316=====================================================
2317
Jeremy Hylton6040aaa2000-10-09 21:27:22 +00002318What is release candidate 1?
2319
2320We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we
2321intend to fix for the 2.0 final release. This release should be a bit
2322more stable than the previous betas. We would like to see even more
2323widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this
2324release candidate. The final release will be exactly the same unless
2325any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the
2326release candidate.
2327
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002328All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002329to support building Python for specific platforms.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002330
2331Core language, builtins, and interpreter
2332
2333- A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented
2334 assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed.
2335
2336- Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number,
2337 e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0. Note that math.pow is unrelated to the builtin
2338 power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by
2339 platform. On Linux, it raises a ValueError.
2340
2341- A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally
2342 caused errors with formats including "%%". For example, the
2343 following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError.
2344
2345- Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead
2346 of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50).
2347
2348- In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode,
2349 rendering them useless. They are now written in binary mode again.
2350
2351Standard library
2352
2353- Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object
2354 methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine.
2355
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002356- In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that
Jeremy Hylton32e20ff2000-10-09 19:48:11 +00002357 manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002358
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002359- Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter
2360 were fixed.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002361
2362- Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines.
2363
2364- Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with
2365 the file-like object interface and with StringIO. If operations are
2366 performed on a closed object, an exception is raised. The truncate
2367 method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002368 argument.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002369
2370- There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its
2371 test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002372 play when the regression test is run.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002373
2374 Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work
2375 correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002376 (OSS).
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002377
2378 The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of
2379 crashing. It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law
2380 audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the
2381 SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide.
2382
2383- The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was
2384 removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C
2385 readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at
2386 compile-time.
2387
2388- The binascii module is now enabled on Win64.
2389
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +00002390- tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing
2391 programs with very long string literals.
2392
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002393Internals
2394
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002395- Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(),
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002396 which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where
2397 the standard library is installed. These vulnerabilities affect all
2398 previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very
2399 long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0]. The risk is greatest for a
2400 setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in
2401 Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability.
2402
2403- Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were
2404 triggered when errors occurred during initialization. The solution,
2405 applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call
2406 PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's
2407 container attributes is complete.
2408
2409- pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and
2410 PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which
2411 provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2.
2412
2413- If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of
2414 bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time.
2415
2416- Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage
2417 collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes.
2418
2419- Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini().
2420
2421Build issues
2422
2423- configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002424 executable suffix. This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002425 X, for example.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002426
2427- The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when
2428 possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX.
2429
2430- The md5 file should now compile on all platforms.
2431
2432- The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define
2433 POLLRDNORM and related constants.
2434
2435- Darwin (Mac OS X): Initial support for static builds on this
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002436 platform.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002437
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +00002438- BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation
2439 process. ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files.
2440 dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command
2441 line during build on PPC BeOS.
2442
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +00002443- Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +00002444 "plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +00002445
2446- Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets.
2447
2448- SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure.
2449
2450Tools and other miscellany
2451
2452- Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze.
2453
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +00002454- IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode
2455 characters.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002456
2457What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)?
2458========================================
2459
2460Core language, builtins, and interpreter
2461
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +00002462- Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002463 "%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002464
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002465- Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and
2466 Python version number and exit immediately.
2467
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002468- eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters.
2469
2470- getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the
2471 attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default
2472 encoding before lookup.
2473
2474- Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds
2475 checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated
2476 string is too long."
2477
2478- Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002479 loop.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002480
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002481
2482Standard library and extensions
2483
Guido van Rossum5b08f132001-04-16 02:05:23 +00002484- socket module: the OpenSSL code now adds support for RAND_status()
2485 and EGD (Entropy Gathering Device).
2486
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002487- array: reverse() method of array now works. buffer_info() now does
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002488 argument checking; it still takes no arguments.
2489
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002490- asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002491
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002492- cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002493
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002494- CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002495
2496- ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002497 letters are now correctly converted to lowercase.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002498
2499- copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically.
2500
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002501- cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002502
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002503- cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002504
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +00002505- dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object. Add constant
2506 `library' to module that names the library used. Added doc strings
2507 and method names to error messages. Uses configure to determine
2508 which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is
2509 now available options.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002510
2511- distutils: Update to version 0.9.3.
2512
2513- dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants.
2514
2515- fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD.
2516
2517- gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option. When enabled all garbage objects
2518 found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage. This is useful
2519 for debugging a program that creates reference cycles.
2520
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002521- httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002522 of HTTP class. Do not close socket on zero-length response. Do not
2523 crash when server sends invalid content-length header.
2524
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002525- mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002526
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002527- marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts
2528 are bigger than 16 bits. When reading a long, repair the unportable
2529 sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines. (It assumed
2530 that signed right shift sign-extends.)
2531
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002532- operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for
2533 __contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002534
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002535- os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where
2536 fork() exists. (popen4() is still in the works.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002537
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002538- os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double-
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +00002539 clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the
2540 DOS "start" command).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002541
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002542- os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +00002543 os.path.join. os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002544
2545- pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains
2546 a non-string repr where a string repr was expected. This behavior
2547 matches cPickle.
2548
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002549- posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002550
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002551- py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002552
2553- readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002554 threads are configured. Adds definition of rl_library_version. (The
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002555 latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002556
2557- rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002558 getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002559
2560- site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +00002561 standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002562 few cycles during startup since the first call to
2563 setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the
2564 encodings package.
2565
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002566- socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned
2567 by makefile().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002568
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002569- sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects. Does not
Jeremy Hylton625915e2000-10-02 13:43:33 +00002570 use buffer interface on Unicode strings. Does not hang if group id
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002571 is followed by whitespace.
2572
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002573- StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002574
2575- struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts.
2576
2577- urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002578 quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002579
2580- Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids. Set
2581 event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel.
2582 Removed some debugging prints.
2583
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002584- UserList: now implements __contains__().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002585
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +00002586- webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(),
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002587 which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly
2588 to a Blue Screen freeze.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002589
2590- xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard
2591 XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1.
2592
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +00002593- xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML. Includes xml.dom.minidom
2594 (conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM
2595 tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific
2596 application. Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions. Still
2597 undocumented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002598
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +00002599- xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler
2600 interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML. Some
2601 documentation is already available.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002602
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +00002603- pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new,
2604 packagized XML support.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002605
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002606
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002607C API
2608
2609- Add three new convenience functions for module initialization --
2610 PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and
2611 PyModule_AddStringConstant().
2612
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002613- Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002614 removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after
2615 #include of stdio.h.
2616
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002617- Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002618 backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions.
2619
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002620- A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction(). Instead of
2621 either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler
2622 and PyOS_setsig() to set one. A new convenience typedef
2623 PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002624
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002625- Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002626 internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default
2627 encoded version of a Unicode object.
2628
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002629- PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects.
2630
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002631- The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +00002632 exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if
2633 <limits.h> is not available.
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002634
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002635- PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was
2636 effectively useless. It is now officially useless but preserved for
2637 backwards compatibility. If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is
2638 set to NULL.
2639
2640- PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects
2641 for the attribute name. See note on getattr() above.
2642
2643- A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode.
2644 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es".
2645 PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a
2646 pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002647 UTF-16.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002648
2649- Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code).
2650
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002651
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002652Internals
2653
2654- On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that
2655 it works when argv[0] is a relative path.
2656
Andrew M. Kuchlinga1099be2000-12-15 01:16:43 +00002657- Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002658 unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002659 rather than by generating a copy of the object.
2660
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +00002661- Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and
2662 the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002663
Jeremy Hylton97693b02000-09-26 17:42:51 +00002664- In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples. Fixed
2665 bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set
2666 while they were still live. Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for
2667 platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int).
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002668
2669- Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred
2670 when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not.
2671
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002672- On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in
2673 registry key.
2674
2675- On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002676 condition.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002677
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002678
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002679Build and platform-specific issues
2680
2681- Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option.
2682
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002683- Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension
2684 modules on Reliant UNIX.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002685
2686- Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!). mmapmodule.c:
2687 Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined. Added missing
2688 prototypes in posixmodule.c.
2689
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002690- Improved support for HP-UX build. Threads should now be correctly
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002691 configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002692
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002693- Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding
2694 define for TELL64.
2695
2696
2697Tools and other miscellany
2698
2699- ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__".
2700
2701- freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes.
2702
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00002703- IDLE:
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +00002704 Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been
2705 created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter
2706 initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit
2707 className parameter to the Tk() constructor.
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +00002708
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +00002709
2710What's new in 2.0 beta 1?
2711=========================
2712
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002713Source Incompatibilities
2714------------------------
2715
2716None. Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2,
2717such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to
2718str(long) and repr(float).
2719
2720
2721Binary Incompatibilities
2722------------------------
2723
2724- Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used
2725with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python
27262.0.
2727
2728- On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
2729Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we
2730can do about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
2731
2732- Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between
2733releases.
2734
2735
2736Overview of Changes Since 1.6
2737-----------------------------
2738
2739There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through
2740the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list
2741of all new modules is included below. Lots of bugs have been fixed.
2742
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00002743The process for making major new changes to the language has changed
2744since Python 1.6. Enhancements must now be documented by a Python
2745Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted.
2746
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002747There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more
2748detail below:
2749
2750 - Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1
2751
2752 - List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)]
2753
2754 - Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name
2755
2756 - Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello"
2757
2758Other important changes:
2759
2760 - Optional collection of cyclical garbage
2761
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00002762Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP)
2763---------------------------------
2764
2765PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design
2766document providing information to the Python community, or describing
2767a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical
2768specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature.
2769
2770We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new
2771features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for
2772documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP
2773author is responsible for building consensus within the community and
2774documenting dissenting opinions.
2775
2776The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002777
2778Augmented Assignment
2779--------------------
2780
2781This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years!
2782Eleven new assignment operators were added:
2783
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00002784 += -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002785
2786For example,
2787
2788 A += B
2789
2790is similar to
2791
2792 A = A + B
2793
2794except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something
2795like dict[index].attr).
2796
2797However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place. Thus,
2798if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B
2799(except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the
2800same effect as A.extend(B)!
2801
2802Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in
2803order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is
2804used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the
2805in-place behavior. For classes, the method name is derived from the
2806method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting
2807an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place
2808__add__.
2809
2810Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters.
2811
2812
2813List Comprehensions
2814-------------------
2815
2816This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed
2817from another list (or lists). The simplest form is:
2818
2819 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>]
2820
Guido van Rossum56db0952000-09-06 23:34:25 +00002821For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9].
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002822This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002823
2824You can also add a condition:
2825
2826 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>]
2827
2828For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list
2829of words that contain no uppercase characters. This is more efficient
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00002830than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002831
2832You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause. For
2833example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences::
2834
2835 def flatten(seq):
2836 return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq]
2837
2838 flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []])
2839
2840This prints
2841
2842 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
2843
2844List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00002845Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed. Described by PEP 202.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002846
2847
2848Extended Import Statement
2849-------------------------
2850
2851Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different
2852name. This can be accomplished like this:
2853
2854 import foo
2855 bar = foo
2856 del foo
2857
2858but this common idiom gets old quickly. A simple extension of the
2859import statement now allows this to be written as follows:
2860
2861 import foo as bar
2862
2863There's also a variant for 'from ... import':
2864
2865 from foo import bar as spam
2866
2867This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this:
2868
2869 import test.regrtest as regrtest
2870
2871Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this
2872context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import
2873statement doesn't involve expressions).
2874
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00002875Implemented by Thomas Wouters. Described by PEP 221.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002876
2877
2878Extended Print Statement
2879------------------------
2880
2881Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print
2882statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file
2883than the default sys.stdout.
2884
2885For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now
2886write:
2887
2888 print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!"
2889
2890As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file
Fred Drake45888ff2000-09-29 17:09:11 +00002891evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used. Thus:
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002892
2893 print >> None, "Hello world"
2894
2895is equivalent to
2896
2897 print "Hello world"
2898
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00002899Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw. Described by PEP 214.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002900
2901
2902Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage
2903---------------------------------------
2904
2905Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down
2906cyclical references between Python objects. It's no replacement for
2907reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being
2908correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all
2909their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to
2910each other. This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann,
2911and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer.
2912
2913There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the
2914garbage collection. There's also an option to the configure script
2915that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection. In 2.0b1,
2916it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user
2917experience with this new feature. There are some questions about its
Fred Drake9f11cf82000-09-29 17:54:40 +00002918performance. If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002919off by default in the final 2.0 release.
2920
2921
2922Smaller Changes
2923---------------
2924
2925A new function zip() was added. zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to
2926map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length;
2927i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)]. When
2928the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins:
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00002929zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)]. See PEP 201.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002930
2931sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial).
2932
2933Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default).
2934dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not,
2935it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value. Thus:
2936
2937 dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item)
2938
2939does the same work as this common idiom:
2940
2941 if not dict.has_key(key):
2942 dict[key] = []
2943 dict[key].append(item)
2944
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00002945There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for
2946indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError.
2947
2948Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223. Added \U
2949escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00002950
2951The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code
2952have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32. Previous versions of Python
2953were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted
2954was 2**16. This limited the size of object constructor expressions,
2955e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files. This
2956limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively
2957fixes the problem. It is now much more likely that you will be
2958limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python.
2959
2960The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python
2961programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit. This
2962limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by
2963Python code. The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from
2964overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump. The default value is
29651000. The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found
2966by running Misc/find_recursionlimit.py.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00002967
2968New Modules and Packages
2969------------------------
2970
2971atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits.
2972
2973imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import
2974hooks.
2975
2976pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul
2977Prescod.
2978
2979xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three
2980subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers. Describing these
2981would fill a volume. There's a special feature whereby a
2982user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard
2983xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute
2984backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package.
2985
2986webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser.
2987
2988
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00002989Changed Modules
2990---------------
2991
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00002992array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and
2993remove
2994
2995binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between
2996binary data and its hex representation
2997
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00002998calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control
2999over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead
3000of printing them. Also new symbolic constants for days of week,
3001e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY.
3002
3003cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a
3004dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object.
3005
3006ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option,
3007remove_section, remove_option, set, and write. They allow the module
3008to be used for writing config files as well as reading them.
3009
3010ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00003011optionally support the RFC 959 REST command.
3012
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003013gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00003014
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003015httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein. See
3016the module doc strings for details.
Guido van Rossum830ca2a2000-09-05 15:34:16 +00003017
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00003018locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh
3019
3020marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or
3021recursive data structures
3022
3023os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid
3024
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003025os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows. popen2/popen3
3026support under Unix.
3027
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00003028os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003029
3030os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix
3031
3032smtplib -- support for sending very long messages
3033
3034socket -- new function getfqdn()
3035
3036readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files.
3037The readline section of the library reference manual contains an
3038example.
3039
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00003040select -- add interface to poll system call
3041
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003042shutil -- new copyfileobj function
3043
3044SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the
3045HTTP server.
3046
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00003047Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003048
3049urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration,
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00003050e.g. http_proxy.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003051
3052whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00003053
3054
3055Obsolete Modules
3056----------------
3057
3058None. However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete:
3059stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail,
3060poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound.
3061
3062
3063Changed, New, Obsolete Tools
3064----------------------------
3065
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00003066None.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00003067
3068
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00003069C-level Changes
3070---------------
3071
3072Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code.
3073
3074All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the
3075Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable.
3076
3077Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file,
3078pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old
3079header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set
3080of header files. (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly;
3081they are all included by Python.h.)
3082
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00003083Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00003084and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor. Mick also
3085added large file support for Linux64 and Win64.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00003086
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003087The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently
3088use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size. In
3089previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the
3090concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size. The old names,
3091e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility
3092at the API level, but are deprecated.
3093
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00003094The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by
3095Fredrik Lundh. It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow
3096on Windows.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003097
3098The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object,
3099tp_traverse and tp_clear. The augmented assignment changes result in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00003100the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003101
3102The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00003103C extension modules. See Include/objimpl.h for details.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003104
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00003105PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of
3106the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string. This change
3107prevents crashes caused by programmer error.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00003108
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00003109New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00003110
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00003111PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions
3112that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an
3113extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done.
3114
3115XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here.
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00003116
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00003117
3118Windows Changes
3119---------------
3120
3121New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above).
3122
3123os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98. See Microsoft
3124Knowledge Base article Q150956. The Win9x workaround described there
3125is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your
3126Python installation. Note that Python uses this internally; it is not
3127a standalone program.
3128
3129Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python
3130on Windows NT or Windows 2000. If you have administrator privileges,
3131Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
3132Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00003133under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The latter is sufficient for all "normal"
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00003134uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working
3135(for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly
3136from CGI).
3137
3138[This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk
3139installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the
3140Python directory. If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this
3141wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with
3142conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python
3143to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files.
3144
3145[This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in
3146\Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\.
3147
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00003148
3149Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6
3150--------------------------------------------
3151
3152The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here
3153is some late-breaking news:
3154
3155New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(),
3156and changes to getlocale() and setlocale().
3157
3158The new module is now enabled per default.
3159
3160It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal
3161strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings
3162!) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from
3163cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa.
3164
3165Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA:
3166http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/
3167
3168
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00003169======================================================================