blob: af41f33ceaa5c702654cfb21164b21739d785486 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000015- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
16 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
17 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
18
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000019- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
20 configure would break checking curses.h.
21
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000022- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
23 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
24
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000025- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
26
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000027- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
28
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000029- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
30
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000031- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
32 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
33
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000034- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
35 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
36 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
37
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000038- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
39 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000040 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000041
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000042- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
43 now encodes backslash correctly.
44
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000045- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
46
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000047- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
48 and long longs.
49
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000050- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
51 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
52 message in this case.
53
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000054- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
55 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
56 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
57 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
58 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
59
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000060- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000061
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000062- Speed up some Unicode operations.
63
64- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
65
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000066- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000067 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
68
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000069- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
70
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000071- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
72 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
73
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000074- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
75
76- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
77
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000078- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
79 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
80 was empty.
81
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000082- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
83 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
84
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000085- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000086 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000087
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000088- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
89 codes.
90
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000091- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
92 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
93 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
94
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000095- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
96 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
97
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000098- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000099 (fixes bug #1119418).
100
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000101- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
102
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000103- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
104 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
105
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000106- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
107 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
108 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
109
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000110- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
111
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000112- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
113 reference counts in some error exit cases.
114
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000115- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
116 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
117 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
118 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
119 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
120 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
121 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
122 realloc.
123
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000124- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
125 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
126
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000127- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
128 like their int counterparts.
129
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000130- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
131 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
132 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
133 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
134 for a longer write-up of the problem).
135
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000136- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
137 serializing floats.
138
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000139- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
140 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
141 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
142
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000143- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
144 278.
145
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000146- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
147 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
148 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
149 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000150 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000151 PyNumber_*().
152 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
153
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000154- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
155 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
156 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
157 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
158
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000159- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
160 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
161 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
162 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
163 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
164
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000165- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
166 disabled caused a crash.
167
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000168- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
169 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
170
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000171- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000172 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
173
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000174- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
175
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000176- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000177 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
178 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
179 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000180
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000181- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
182
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000183- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
184 returning None.
185
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000186- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000187 ('\') with a specific error message.
188
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000189- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
190
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000191- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
192 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
193
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000194- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000195 an ferror() call.
196
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000197- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
198 list.sort().
199
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000200- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
201 (2+3) --> (5).
202
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000203- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
204
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000205- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
206 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000207
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000208- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
209 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
210 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
211
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000212- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
213 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
214 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
215
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000216Extension Modules
217-----------------
218
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000219- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
220
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000221- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
222
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000223- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
224 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
225 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
226
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000227- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
228 without prior setting of the userptr.
229
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000230- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
231
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000232- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
233
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000234- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
235 problem on AIX.
236
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000237- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
238
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000239- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
240
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000241- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
242
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000243- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
244 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
245
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000246- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
247
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000248- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
249 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
250
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000251- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
252
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000253- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
254 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
255
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000256- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
257 returns in cStringIO.c.
258
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000259- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
260 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
261
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000262- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
263
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000264- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
265
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000266- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
267 the file system encoding.
268
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000269- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
270 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000271
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000272- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
273
274- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000275 line without newlines.
276
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000277- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
278 on Windows.
279
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000280- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000281 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
282
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000283- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
284 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
285 for large or negative values.
286
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000287- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000288 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000289
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000290- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
291
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000292- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
293 if available on the platform.
294
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000295- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
296 available on the platform.
297
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000298- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
299 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
300
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000301- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
302
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000303- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
304 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
305 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
306
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000307- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
308
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000309- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
310 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
311
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000312- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000313 file size.
314
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000315- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
316
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000317- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
318 {remove_history,replace_history}
319
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000320- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
321 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000322
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000323- stat_float_times is now True.
324
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000325- array.array objects are now picklable.
326
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000327- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
328 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
329
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000330- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
331 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
332 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
333
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000334- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
335 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000336
337Library
338-------
339
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000340- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
341
342- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000343
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000344- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
345
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000346- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000347 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000348
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000349- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
350 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000351
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000352- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
353
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000354- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
355
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000356- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
357 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
358 LoadError subclasses IOError.
359
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000360- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000361 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
362 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
363 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
364 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
365
366 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
367 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
368 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
369 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
370 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000371
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000372- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
373 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
374 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
375
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000376- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
377
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000378- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
379
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000380- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
381 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
382 illegal argument)
383
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000384- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
385 is an error in the format string.
386
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000387- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
388
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000389- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000390 "parent" argument.
391
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000392- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
393 for padding.
394
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000395- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
396 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
397
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000398- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
399 to get the correct encoding.
400
401- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
402 languages.
403
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000404- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
405
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000406- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
407
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000408- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
409
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000410- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
411 functionality.
412
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000413- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
414
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000415- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
416 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
417
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000418- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
419 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
420 match the Content-Length header.
421
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000422- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
423
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000424- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
425 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000426 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000427
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000428- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
429
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000430- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
431
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000432- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
433 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
434
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000435- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
436 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
437 Tkdnd.
438
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000439- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
440 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
441
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000442- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
443 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
444
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000445- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000446 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
447
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000448- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
449 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
450
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000451- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
452 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
453
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000454- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000455 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000456
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000457- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
458
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000459- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
460 error messages.
461
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000462- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
463
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000464- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
465 Bug #1224621.
466
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000467- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
468 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
469 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
470 terminates by raising StopIteration.
471
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000472- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
473
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000474- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
475 component of the path.
476
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000477- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
478 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
479 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
480 class at all.
481
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000482- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
483 files to PyPI.
484
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000485- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
486 them to PyPI.
487
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000488- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
489 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
490 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
491 work as expected.
492
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000493- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
494 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
495
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000496- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000497 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
498
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000499- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
500
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000501- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
502 to build.
503
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000504- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
505 symbolic links on Windows.
506
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000507- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000508 profile.py if available.
509
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000510- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
511
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000512- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
513 in LWPCookieJar.
514
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000515- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
516
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000517- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
518
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000519- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
520
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000521- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
522
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000523- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
524
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000525- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
526
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000527- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
528
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000529- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
530
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000531- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
532 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
533 be exploited in various ways.
534
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000535- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000536 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
537
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000538- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
539 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
540
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000541- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000542 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
543
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000544- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
545
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000546- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
547
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000548- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
549
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000550- Enhancements to the csv module:
551
552 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000553 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000554 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000555 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
556 reporting.
557 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
558 dictates.
559 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000560 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000561 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000562 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
563 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000564 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
565 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000566 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000567 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
568 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
569 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
570 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
571 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
572 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
573 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
574 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
575 without first creating a dialect class.
576 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
577 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
578 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000579 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000580 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
581 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000582 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
583 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
584 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
585 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000586 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
587 This has been fixed.
588
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000589- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
590 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
591 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
592 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
593
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000594- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
595
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000596- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
597 (Bug #951915).
598
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000599- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
600 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
601 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000602 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000603
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000604- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
605
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000606- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
607 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
608
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000609- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
610
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000611- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
612
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000613- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
614
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000615- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
616
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000617- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
618
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000619- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
620 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
621 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
622
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000623- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000624 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000625
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000626- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
627 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
628 tokenizer with very long source lines.
629
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000630- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
631 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
632 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000633
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000634- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
635 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000636
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000637- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
638 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
639
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000640- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
641 correctly.
642
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000643- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
644 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
645 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
646 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
647 between two lines.
648
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000649- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
650 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
651 handlers.
652
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000653- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000654 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
655 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000656
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000657- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
658 considering it exactly like a '*'.
659
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000660- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
661 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000662
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000663- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
664
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000665Build
666-----
667
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000668- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
669
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000670- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
671 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
672
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000673- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
674
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000675- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
676 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
677
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000678- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
679 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
680
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000681- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
682 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
683 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000684 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000685
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000686- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
687 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
688 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
689
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000690- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
691
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000692- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
693 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
694
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000695- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
696 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
697 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
698 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
699 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
700 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
701 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
702 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
703
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000704- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
705 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
706 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
707 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
708
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000709C API
710-----
711
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000712- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
713
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000714- Removed PyRange_New().
715
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000716- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
717 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
718 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
719 mappings.
720
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000721
722Tests
723-----
724
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000725- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000726
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000727- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
728 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
729
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000730
731Documentation
732-------------
733
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000734- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
735
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000736- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
737 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
738
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000739- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
740
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000741- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
742
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000743- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
744
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000745- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
746
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000747- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
748
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000749- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
750
751- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
752
753- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
754
755- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
756
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000757- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
758 Closes bug #1166582.
759
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000760- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
761 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
762 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
763
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000764Mac
765---
766
767
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000768New platforms
769-------------
770
771- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
772
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000773
774Tools/Demos
775-----------
776
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000777- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
778 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
779 source files that need an encoding declaration.
780 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
781
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000782- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
783
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000784- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000785
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000786- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
787 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000788
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000789What's New in Python 2.4 final?
790===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000791
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000792*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000793
794Core and builtins
795-----------------
796
797- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
798 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
799 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
800
801
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000802What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
803==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000804
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000805*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000806
807Core and builtins
808-----------------
809
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000810- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
811 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
812 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
813
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000814
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000815Library
816-------
817
818- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
819 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
820 raised is re-raised.
821
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000822- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
823 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
824
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000825- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
826 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
827 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
828 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
829 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
830 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
831 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
832 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
833 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
834 by the slice are recomputed now.
835
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000836- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000837
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000838Build
839-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000840
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000841- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
842 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
843 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000844
845C API
846-----
847
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000848- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
849
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000850
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000851What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
852================================
853
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000854*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000855
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000856License
857-------
858
859The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
860is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
861changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
862Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
863intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
864durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
865the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
866License::
867
868 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
869
870says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
871to Python 2.1.1.
872
873The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
874License Version 2.
875
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000876Core and builtins
877-----------------
878
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000879- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
880 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
881 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
882 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
883 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
884 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
885 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000886 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000887 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
888 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
889
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000890- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000891
892Extension Modules
893-----------------
894
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000895- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
896 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
897 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
898 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000899
900Library
901-------
902
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000903- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
904 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
905 returned.
906
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000907- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
908
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000909- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
910 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
911
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000912- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
913
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000914- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
915 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000916
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000917- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
918
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000919- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
920
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000921- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000922 the source code is updated and reloaded.
923
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000924Build
925-----
926
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000927- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000928
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000929What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
930================================
931
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000932*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000933
934Core and builtins
935-----------------
936
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000937- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000938 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
939
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000940- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
941 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
942 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
943 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
944
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000945- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
946 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
947
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000948- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
949 constant.
950
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000951- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
952 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
953 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
954 large), and to anomalies such as
955 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
956 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
957 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
958 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000959
960Extension modules
961-----------------
962
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000963- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
964 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000965 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
966 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
967 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000968
969Library
970-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000971
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000972- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000973 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000974 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
975 --swig-cpp.
976
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000977- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
978 it is set.
979
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000980- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000981
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000982- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
983 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
984 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
985 Closes bug #1039270.
986
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000987- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000988
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000989 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000990 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
991 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
992 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
993 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
994 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
995 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
996 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
997 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
998 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
999 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1000 + Updates to documentation.
1001
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001002- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1003 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1004 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1005 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1006
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001007- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001008
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001009- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1010 applications should use the getmember function.
1011
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001012- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1013
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001014- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1015 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1016 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1017 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1018 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1019 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1020 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1021 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1022 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1023
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001024- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1025 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001026 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001027
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001028- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1029 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1030 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1031 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1032 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1033 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1034 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1035 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001036
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001037- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1038 the new public features (of which there are many).
1039
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001040- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001041 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1042 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1043 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1044 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001045 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001046
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001047- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1048
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001049- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1050 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1051 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1052 options.
1053
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001054- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1055 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1056 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1057 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1058 conditions under which non-string values work.
1059
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001060Build
1061-----
1062
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001063- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1064 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1065 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1066
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001067- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1068 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1069 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1070 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1071 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001072
1073C API
1074-----
1075
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001076- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1077 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1078
1079- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1080
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001081- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1082 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1083 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1084 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1085 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1086 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1087 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1088 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1089 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1090
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001091- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1092
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001093- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1094 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1095 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001096
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001097Tests
1098-----
1099
1100- test__locale ported to unittest
1101
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001102Mac
1103---
1104
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001105- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1106 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1107 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001108
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001109Tools/Demos
1110-----------
1111
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001112- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1113 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1114 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1115 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1116 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001117
1118
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001119What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1120=================================
1121
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001122*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001123
1124Core and builtins
1125-----------------
1126
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001127- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001128 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1129
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001130- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1131 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1132 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1133 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1134 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1135 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1136 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1137 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001138 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1139 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1140 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1141 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1142 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001143
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001144- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1145 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1146 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1147 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1148 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1149
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001150- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1151
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001152- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1153 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1154
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001155- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1156 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1157 modified the list.
1158
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001159- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1160 functions is now writable.
1161
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001162- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1163 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1164 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1165 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1166
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001167- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1168 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1169 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1170 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1171 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001172
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001173- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1174 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1175
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001176Extension modules
1177-----------------
1178
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001179- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1180
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001181- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1182 data.
1183
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001184- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1185 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1186 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1187 supposed to have been truncated away.
1188
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001189- Added socket.socketpair().
1190
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001191- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1192 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1193
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001194- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001195 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1196
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001197Library
1198-------
1199
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001200- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001201 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001202
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001203- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1204 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1205
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001206- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1207 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1208
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001209- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1210
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001211- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1212 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001213
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001214- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1215 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1216
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001217- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1218
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001219- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1220
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001221- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1222
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001223- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1224 Percivall.
1225
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001226- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1227 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1228
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001229- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1230 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1231 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001232 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001233
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001234- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1235 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1236 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1237 and exponent.
1238
1239- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1240
1241- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001242 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001243 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1244
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001245- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1246 to the readline module.
1247
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001248- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001249 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1250 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001251
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001252- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1253 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1254 contains symlinks.
1255
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001256- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1257 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1258
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001259- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1260 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1261 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1262
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001263- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1264 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1265 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1266 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1267 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1268 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1269 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1270 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1271 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1272 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1273 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1274 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1275 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1276
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001277- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1278
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001279Tools/Demos
1280-----------
1281
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001282- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1283 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1284
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001285- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1286
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001287Build
1288-----
1289
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001290- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1291 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1292 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1293 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1294 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1295 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1296 plans to do so.
1297
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001298- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1299 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1300
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001301- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1302 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1303
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001304- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1305 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1306
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001307- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1308 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1309
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001310- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1311 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1312
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001313C API
1314-----
1315
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001316..
1317
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001318Documentation
1319-------------
1320
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001321- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1322 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1323
1324- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1325 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1326 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001327
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001328New platforms
1329-------------
1330
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001331- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1332
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001333Tests
1334-----
1335
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001336..
1337
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001338Windows
1339-------
1340
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001341- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1342 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1343 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1344 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1345 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1346 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1347 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1348 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1349 the problem.
1350
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001351Mac
1352---
1353
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001354..
1355
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001356
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001357What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1358=================================
1359
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001360*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001361
1362Core and builtins
1363-----------------
1364
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001365- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1366 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1367 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1368 sensitive code.
1369
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001370- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001371 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001372
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001373 @staticmethod
1374 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001375
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001376 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001377
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001378- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1379 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1380 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1381 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1382 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1383 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1384 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1385 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1386 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1387 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1388 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1389
1390 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1391 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1392 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1393 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1394 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1395 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1396 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1397
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001398- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1399 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1400
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001401- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001402 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001403
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001404- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001405 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001406 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1407
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001408- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001409 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1410 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1411
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001412- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1413 types that support garbage collection.
1414
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001415- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1416
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001417- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1418 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1419 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1420 Jython.
1421
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001422- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1423
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001424- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1425 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1426
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001427- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1428 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1429 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001430
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001431- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1432 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1433 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1434
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001435Extension modules
1436-----------------
1437
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001438- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1439
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001440Library
1441-------
1442
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001443- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1444 TIS-620
1445
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001446- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1447 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1448 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1449 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1450 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1451 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1452 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1453 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1454 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1455 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1456
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001457- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1458
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001459- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1460 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1461 same as when the argument is omitted).
1462 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1463
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001464- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1465
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001466- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1467 schemes are offered.
1468
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001469- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1470
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001471- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1472 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1473 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1474
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001475- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1476
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001477- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1478 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1479
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001480- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1481 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1482 when dummy_threading is being used.
1483
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001484- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1485 from a tarfile.
1486
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001487- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001488 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001489
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001490- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1491 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1492 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1493 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1494
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001495- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1496 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1497
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001498- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1499 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1500 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1501 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1502 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1503 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1504 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1505 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1506 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1507 by some other method in progress).
1508
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001509- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1510 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1511 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001512
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001513- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1514
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001515- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1516 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1517 AM Kuchling.
1518
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001519- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1520 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1521 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1522
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001523- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1524 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1525 instead of unsigned.
1526
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001527- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001528 no longer part of the public API.
1529
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001530- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1531 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1532 string methods of the same name).
1533
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001534- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001535 SF patch 945642.
1536
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001537- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1538
1539 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1540
1541 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1542 DocTestSuites.
1543
1544- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1545 that provide thread-local data.
1546
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001547- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1548 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1549
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001550- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1551
1552- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1553 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1554 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1555
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001556- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1557
1558 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1559 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1560 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001561
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001562 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1563 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1564 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1565 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1566
1567 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1568 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1569
1570 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1571 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1572 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1573 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1574
1575 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1576 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1577 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1578 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1579 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1580
1581 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1582 wrapping help output.
1583
1584 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1585 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1586 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001587
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001588C API
1589-----
1590
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001591- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1592 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1593 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1594 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1595 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1596 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1597 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1598 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1599 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1600 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1601 its visible semantics have not changed.
1602
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001603- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1604 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1605
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001606Documentation
1607-------------
1608
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001609- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001610
1611 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001612 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001613
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001614 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001615
1616 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1617
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001618- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001619
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001620Tests
1621-----
1622
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001623- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001624 platforms that use the Makefile.
1625
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001626- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1627 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1628 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1629
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001630
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001631What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1632=================================
1633
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001634*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001635
1636Core and builtins
1637-----------------
1638
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001639- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1640 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1641 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1642 objects now (one object instead of three).
1643
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001644- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1645 Windows DLLs.
1646
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001647- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1648 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001649
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001650- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1651 a new .pyc magic.
1652
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001653- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1654 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1655 be there.
1656
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001657- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1658 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1659 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1660
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001661- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1662 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1663 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1664
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001665- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1666
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001667- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1668 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1669 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001670
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001671- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1672 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1673
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001674- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1675
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001676- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001677 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001678
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001679- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1680
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001681- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1682
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001683- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1684 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1685
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001686- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1687 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1688 Fixes bug #858016 .
1689
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001690- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1691 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1692 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1693
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001694- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1695 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1696 improves their performance (about 35%).
1697
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001698- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1699 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1700 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1701
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001702- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1703 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1704 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1705 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1706
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001707- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1708 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001709 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001710 length is not known).
1711
1712- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1713 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001714 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1715 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001716 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1717
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001718- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1719 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1720
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001721- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1722 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1723 keyword arguments.
1724
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001725- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1726 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1727 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1728
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001729- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1730 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1731 cases.
1732
1733- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1734 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1735 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1736 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1737 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1738 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1739 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1740 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1741 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1742 a release build.
1743
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001744- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1745 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1746
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001747- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001748 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001749
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001750- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1751 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1752 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1753 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1754 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1755 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1756 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1757 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1758 destroyed.
1759
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001760- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1761 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1762 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1763 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1764 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1765 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1766 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1767 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1768
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001769- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1770 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1771 character other than a space.
1772
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001773- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1774 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1775 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1776 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1777 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1778 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1779 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1780 attributes with the same name.
1781
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001782- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1783 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1784 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1785 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1786 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1787 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1788 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1789 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1790 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1791 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1792 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1793 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1794 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1795 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001796
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001797- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1798 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1799 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1800 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1801 This has been repaired.
1802
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001803- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1804
1805- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1806
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001807- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1808 over a sequence.
1809
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001810- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001811 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001812
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001813- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1814
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001815- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1816 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1817 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1818 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1819 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1820 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1821 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1822 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1823
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001824- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1825 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1826 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1827
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001828- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1829 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1830 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1831 freelist.
1832
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001833- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1834 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1835
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001836- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1837 number.
1838
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001839- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1840 a TypeError exception.
1841
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001842- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1843 820195.
1844
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001845- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1846 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1847 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1848
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001849- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001850 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1851 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001852
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001853- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1854 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1855 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1856
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001857- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1858 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001859 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001860
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001861- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001862 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1863 the first call.
1864
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001865
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001866Extension modules
1867-----------------
1868
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001869- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1870 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1871
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001872- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1873 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1874 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1875 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1876 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1877 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1878 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001879
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001880- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1881
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001882- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1883
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001884- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1885 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1886
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001887- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1888 fewer false positives.
1889
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001890- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1891 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1892
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001893- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001894 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1895
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001896- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001897 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001898 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001899 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1900 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001901
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001902- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1903 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1904 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1905 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1906
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001907- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1908 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1909 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1910 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1911 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1912 #897625.
1913
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001914- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1915 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1916
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001917- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1918 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1919 and pops on either side of the deque.
1920
1921- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1922 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1923
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001924- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1925 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1926 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1927 other functions that expect a function argument.
1928
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001929- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1930
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001931- os.getsid was added.
1932
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001933- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1934 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1935 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1936
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001937- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1938
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001939- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1940
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001941- readline.clear_history was added.
1942
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001943- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1944
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001945- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1946
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001947- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1948
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001949- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1950
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001951- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1952
1953- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1954
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001955- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1956
1957- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1958
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001959- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1960 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1961 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1962
1963- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1964 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1965 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1966 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1967 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1968 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1969 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1970
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001971- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1972 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1973 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1974 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001975
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001976- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001977 iterators from a single iterable.
1978
1979- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1980 of raising a TypeError exception.
1981
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001982- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1983 as parameter.
1984
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001985Library
1986-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001987
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001988- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1989
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001990- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1991 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1992 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001993
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001994- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1995 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1996 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001997
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001998- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001999
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002000- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2001 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002002
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002003- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2004 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2005
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002006- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2007
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002008- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002009 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002010
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002011- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002012 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002013
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002014- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2015
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002016- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2017 on cygwin and mingw32.
2018
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002019- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2020
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002021- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2022 module.
2023
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002024- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2025 installation scheme for all platforms.
2026
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002027- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002028 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002029
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002030- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2031 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2032 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2033
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002034- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2035 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2036 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2037
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002038- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2039
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002040- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2041
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002042- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2043 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2044
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002045- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2046 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2047 type pattern with the same value exists.
2048
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002049- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2050 when run from the command prompt).
2051
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002052- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2053 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2054
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002055- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2056 default sort).
2057
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002058- Added global runctx function to profile module
2059
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002060- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2061
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002062- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2063
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002064- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2065
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002066- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002067 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2068 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2069 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2070 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2071 accordingly.
2072
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002073- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2074 decoding standards.
2075
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002076- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2077 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2078 called for all requests.
2079
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002080- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2081 they are passed to the compiler.
2082
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002083- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2084 indent, width and depth.
2085
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002086- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2087 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2088
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002089- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2090 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2091
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002092- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2093
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002094- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2095
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002096- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2097
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002098- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2099 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2100
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002101- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002102 for better performance.
2103
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002104- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002105
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002106- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2107 a string).
2108
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002109- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2110
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002111- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2112
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002113- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2114
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002115- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2116
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002117- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2118 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2119 list of fieldnames.
2120
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002121- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2122 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2123
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002124- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2125
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002126- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2127 empty lists.
2128
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002129- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2130 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2131 and shelves.
2132
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002133- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2134 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2135
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002136- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002137 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2138 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002139
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002140- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2141 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002142 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002143
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002144- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002145 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2146 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2147
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002148- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2149 and removed in Py2.4.
2150
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002151- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2152
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002153- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2154
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002155Tools/Demos
2156-----------
2157
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002158- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2159 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2160
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002161- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2162
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002163- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2164 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2165 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2166 destination in situations where both files are given.
2167
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002168- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2169 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2170 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2171 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2172
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002173- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2174
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002175- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2176 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2177 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2178 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2179 now.
2180
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002181- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2182 in effect
2183
2184- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2185 C-c C-h
2186
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002187- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2188 -d option was given.
2189
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002190Build
2191-----
2192
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002193- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2194 build under OS X.
2195
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002196- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2197 --enable-profiling.
2198
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002199- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2200 is configured --with-tsc.
2201
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002202- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2203 on AMD64.
2204
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002205- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2206 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2207
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002208- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2209 removed.
2210
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002211- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2212 supported (see PEP 11).
2213
2214- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2215
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002216- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2217
2218- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2219 (see PEP 11).
2220
2221- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2222 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2223
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002224C API
2225-----
2226
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002227- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2228 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2229 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2230
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002231- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2232 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2233 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2234 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2235
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002236- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2237 generator objects.
2238
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002239- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2240 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002241 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2242 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002243
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002244- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2245 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2246
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002247- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2248 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2249 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2250 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2251 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2252
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002253- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2254 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2255 about 10% faster.
2256
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002257- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2258 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2259
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002260- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2261 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2262 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2263 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2264
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002265Windows
2266-------
2267
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002268- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2269 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2270 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2271 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2272
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002273- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2274 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2275 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2276
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002277
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002278What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2279===============================
2280
2281*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2282
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002283IDLE
2284----
2285
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002286- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2287 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2288 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2289 context-menu actions.
2290
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002291- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2292 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2293 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2294 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2295 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2296 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2297 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2298 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2299 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2300
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002301
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002302What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2303=============================================
2304
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002305*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002306
2307Core and builtins
2308-----------------
2309
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002310- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002311 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002312 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2313
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002314Extension modules
2315-----------------
2316
2317- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2318 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2319 than once. This has been fixed.
2320
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002321- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2322 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2323 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2324 call.
2325
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002326- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2327
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002328Library
2329-------
2330
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002331- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2332 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2333
2334- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2335 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2336 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2337 restored.
2338
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002339IDLE
2340----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002341
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002342- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002343
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002344Build
2345-----
2346
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002347- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2348 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2349
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002350C API
2351-----
2352
2353Windows
2354-------
2355
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002356- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2357 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2358
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002359- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2360
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002361Mac
2362---
2363
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002364- Various fixes to pimp.
2365
2366- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2367
2368- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2369 more problems than it solves.
2370
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002371
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002372What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2373=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002374
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002375*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2376
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002377Core and builtins
2378-----------------
2379
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002380- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2381 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2382
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002383- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2384 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002385 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002386
2387- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2388 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2389 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002390 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002391
2392- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2393 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002394
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002395- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2396 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2397 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2398
2399- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002400 770247.
2401
2402- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002403
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002404Extension modules
2405-----------------
2406
2407- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2408 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2409
2410- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2411
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002412- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2413
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002414- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2415 contained within the _strptime module.
2416
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002417- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2418 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2419
2420- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002421 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2422
2423- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2424 the find_class attribute, if present.
2425
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002426- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002427
2428 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2429 (SF bug 763298).
2430
2431 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002432 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2433 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2434 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002435
2436 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2437
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002438Library
2439-------
2440
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002441- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2442
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002443- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2444 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2445 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2446 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2447 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2448 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2449 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2450 or Tester().
2451
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002452- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2453 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2454 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2455 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2456 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2457 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2458 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2459 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2460 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002461
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002462 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002463
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002464- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2465 weren't before was an oversight.
2466
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002467- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2468 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2469
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002470- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2471 when there are no lines.
2472
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002473- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2474 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2475
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002476- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2477 to child processes.
2478
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002479- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2480
2481- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2482
2483- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2484 xmlrpclib.
2485
2486- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2487 responses.
2488
2489- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2490 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2491
2492- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2493 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2494 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2495
2496- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2497 used as patterns.
2498
2499- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2500 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2501 than Tk 8.3.
2502
2503- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2504
2505- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002506
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002507Tools/Demos
2508-----------
2509
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002510- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2511
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002512- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2513
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002514- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002515
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002516Build
2517-----
2518
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002519- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2520
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002521- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2522
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002523- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2524 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002525
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002526- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2527 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2528 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002529
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002530C API
2531-----
2532
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002533- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2534 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2535
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002536Windows
2537-------
2538
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002539- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2540 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2541 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2542 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2543 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2544 Python exception ::
2545
2546 thread.error: can't start new thread
2547
2548 is raised now.
2549
2550- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2551 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2552 instead of from DLL teardown.
2553
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002554Mac
2555---
2556
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002557- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002558 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002559 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2560 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2561 the executable in the bundle.
2562
2563- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002564
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002565- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2566
2567- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2568 on Panther.
2569
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002570What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2571================================
2572
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002573*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002574
2575Core and builtins
2576-----------------
2577
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002578- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2579 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2580 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2581 with the -i option.
2582
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002583- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2584 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2585
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002586- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2587 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2588
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002589- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2590 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2591 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2592 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2593 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2594 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2595 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2596 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2597 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2598 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2599 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2600 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2601 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002602
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002603- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2604 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2605 embedded in a lambda expression.
2606
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002607- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2608 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2609 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2610 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2611 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2612
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002613- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2614 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2615 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2616
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002617- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2618 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2619
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002620- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2621 It's writable again.
2622
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002623- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2624 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2625 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002626 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002627
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002628- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2629 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2630 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2631
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002632Extension modules
2633-----------------
2634
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002635- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2636 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2637
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002638- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2639 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2640 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2641 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2642
2643- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2644 collection.
2645
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002646- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2647 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2648 unique within a single program run.
2649
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002650- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2651 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2652
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002653- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2654 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2655
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002656- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2657 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002658
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002659- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2660
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002661- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2662 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2663
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002664- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2665 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2666 for many BSD-derived systems.
2667
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002668
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002669Library
2670-------
2671
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002672- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2673 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2674 primary ones:
2675
2676 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2677 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2678 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2679
2680 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2681 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2682 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2683 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2684 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2685 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2686
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002687- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2688 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2689 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2690 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2691 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2692 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2693 argument.
2694
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002695- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2696 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2697 in the archive.
2698
2699- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2700 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2701
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002702- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2703 569574).
2704
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002705- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2706 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2707 no more.
2708
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002709- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2710 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2711 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2712 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2713 code coverage.
2714
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002715- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2716 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2717 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002718 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2719 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002720
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002721- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2722 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2723 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002724 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002725
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002726- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2727
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002728- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2729 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2730 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2731 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2732
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002733- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2734 handling.
2735
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002736- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2737 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2738
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002739- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2740 in socket.py.
2741
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002742- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2743
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002744- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2745 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2746 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2747 opener with proxy support.
2748
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002749- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2750
2751- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2752
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002753Tools/Demos
2754-----------
2755
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002756- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2757
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002758- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2759
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002760- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2761 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002762
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002763- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2764 files.
2765
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002766Build
2767-----
2768
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002769- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002770 different root directory.
2771
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002772C API
2773-----
2774
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002775- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2776 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2777 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2778 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2779 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2780 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2781 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2782 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2783 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2784 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2785
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002786- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2787 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2788 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2789 from Python.
2790
2791
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002792New platforms
2793-------------
2794
2795None this time.
2796
2797Tests
2798-----
2799
2800- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2801 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2802
2803Windows
2804-------
2805
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002806- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2807
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002808- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2809 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2810 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2811 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2812 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2813 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2814 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2815 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2816 that's what it's for.
2817
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002818Mac
2819---
2820
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002821- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2822 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2823 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2824 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002825- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2826 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2827- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002828
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002829SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2830------------------------------------
2831
2832430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2833598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2834622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2835661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2836683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2837697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2838713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2839724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2840727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2841729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2842730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2843731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2844732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2845733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2846735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2847740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2848744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2849745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2850747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2851749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2852751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2853753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2854755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2855757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2856760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2857
2858
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002859What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2860================================
2861
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002862*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002863
2864Core and builtins
2865-----------------
2866
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002867- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2868 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2869
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002870- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2871 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2872 and cannot be strings).
2873
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002874- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2875 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2876 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2877 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2878
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002879- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2880 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2881 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2882 Python itself.
2883
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002884- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2885 the referenced object, if it has one.
2886
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002887- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2888 the thread started at
2889 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2890
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002891- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2892 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2893 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2894 placed on a list index.
2895
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002896- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2897 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2898 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2899 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2900
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002901- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2902 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2903 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2904 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2905 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2906 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2907 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2908
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002909- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2910 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2911 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2912 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2913 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2914
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002915- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2916 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002917
2918- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2919 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2920 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2921 #693195.)
2922
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002923- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2924 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002925
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002926- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002927 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002928 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2929 interpreter executions, would fail.
2930
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002931- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002932 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002933 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002934
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002935Extension modules
2936-----------------
2937
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002938- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2939 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2940 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2941 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2942
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002943- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2944 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2945
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002946- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2947 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2948 and Greg Chapman.)
2949
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002950- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2951 recursively.
2952
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002953- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002954 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2955 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2956 leaks.
2957
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002958- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2959
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002960- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2961 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2962 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2963 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2964 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2965 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2966 #705836.
2967
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002968- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002969 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2970
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002971- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2972 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2973 See SF bug #692416.
2974
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002975- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2976 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2977
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002978- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2979 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2980 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002981
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002982- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002983 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2984 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2985
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002986- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2987 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2988 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2989 timeouts to work properly.
2990
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002991Library
2992-------
2993
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002994- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2995 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2996 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2997 future release.
2998
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002999- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3000 for querying platform dependent features.
3001
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003002- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003003
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003004- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3005 pickle protocol versions.
3006
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003007- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3008 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3009 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3010
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003011- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3012
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003013- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3014 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3015 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3016 modules.
3017
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003018- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3019 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3020 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3021
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003022- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3023 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3024
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003025- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3026 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3027 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3028
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003029- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003030 MS Office extensions.
3031
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003032- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3033 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3034
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003035- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3036 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3037
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003038- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3039 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3040 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3041 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3042 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3043 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3044
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003045- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3046 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3047 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003048
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003049- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3050 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3051 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3052
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003053- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3054
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003055- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3056 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3057 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3058
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003059Tools/Demos
3060-----------
3061
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003062- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3063 See the module docstring for details.
3064
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003065Build
3066-----
3067
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003068- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3069 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003070
3071C API
3072-----
3073
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003074- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3075
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003076- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3077 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3078 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3079
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003080- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3081 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003082
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003083 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3084 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3085 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003086
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003087- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003088 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3089
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003090- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3091 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3092 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003093
3094New platforms
3095-------------
3096
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003097None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003098
3099Tests
3100-----
3101
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003102- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3103 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003104
3105Windows
3106-------
3107
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003108- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3109 function.
3110
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003111- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3112 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003113
3114Mac
3115---
3116
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003117- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3118 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003119
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003120- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3121 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003122
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003123- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3124 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3125 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003126
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003127- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003128 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3129 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003130
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003131- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3132 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003133
3134
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003135What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3136=================================
3137
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003138*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003139
3140Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003141-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003142
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003143- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3144 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3145 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3146
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003147- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3148 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3149 (SF patch #664376.)
3150
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003151- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3152 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3153 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3154 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3155 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3156 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003157 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003158
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003159- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3160 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3161 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3162 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003163 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003164
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003165- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3166 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3167 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3168 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3169 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3170 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3171 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3172 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3173 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3174 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3175 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3176
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003177- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3178 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3179 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3180 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3181 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3182 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3183
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003184- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3185 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3186
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003187- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3188 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3189 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3190 case.)
3191
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003192- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3193 passed as unicode strings.
3194
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003195- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3196 See SF bug #683467.
3197
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003198- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3199 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3200
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003201- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3202
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003203- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3204
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003205- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3206 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3207 arguments.
3208
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003209- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3210 See SF bug #667147.
3211
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003212- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003213 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003214 See SF bug #676155.
3215
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003216- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003217 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003218 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3219 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3220 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3221 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3222 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3223 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003224
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003225Extension modules
3226-----------------
3227
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003228- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3229 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3230 tp_as_number pointer.
3231
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003232- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3233 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3234 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3235 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3236 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3237
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003238- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3239
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003240- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3241
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003242- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003243 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003244 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3245 patch #678531.)
3246
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003247- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3248 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3249
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003250- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3251 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3252
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003253- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3254
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003255- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3256 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3257 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3258
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003259- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3260
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003261- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3262 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3263
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003264- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003265
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003266- datetime changes:
3267
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003268 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3269
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003270 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3271 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3272 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3273 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3274 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3275 now.
3276
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003277 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003278 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3279 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003280
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003281 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003282 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003283 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3284 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3285 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3286 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003287
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003288 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3289 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3290 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003291 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3292
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003293 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3294 by a later example coded by Guido.
3295
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003296 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003297 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3298 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3299 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003300 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3301 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3302
3303 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3304 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3305 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3306 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3307 tzinfo subclass instance.
3308
3309 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3310 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3311 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3312 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3313 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3314 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3315 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3316 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003317
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003318 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3319 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3320 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3321 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3322 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003323 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3324
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003325 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003326
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003327 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3328 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3329 as a naive datetime object.
3330
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003331 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3332 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3333 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3334
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003335 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3336 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3337 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3338 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3339 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3340 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3341 comparison.
3342
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003343 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3344 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3345 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3346 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003347 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003348
3349 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003350
3351 and ::
3352
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003353 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3354
3355 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3356 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3357 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3358 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3359
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003360 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3361 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3362 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3363 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3364 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3365
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003366 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3367 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003368 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3369 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003370
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003371Library
3372-------
3373
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003374- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3375 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3376
3377- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3378 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3379 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3380 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3381 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3382 See PEP 307 for details.
3383
3384- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3385 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3386
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003387- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3388 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003389 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003390 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3391 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003392 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003393
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003394- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3395 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3396
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003397- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3398 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3399 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3400
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003401- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3402
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003403- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3404 exception.
3405
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003406- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3407 class.
3408
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003409- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3410 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3411 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3412
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003413- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3414 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3415
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003416- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003417 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3418 See SF bug #659228.
3419
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003420- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3421 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3422 See SF patch #651082.
3423
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003424- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003425
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003426- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3427 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3428
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003429- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003430 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003431
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003432- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3433 DOS paths from other platforms.
3434
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003435Tools/Demos
3436-----------
3437
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003438- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3439 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3440 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3441 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3442 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3443 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3444 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3445 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3446 example:
3447
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003448 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3449 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003450
3451 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3452
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003453
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003454Build
3455-----
3456
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003457- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3458 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3459 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003460 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3461
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003462 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3463
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003464- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3465 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3466 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3467 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3468 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3469 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3470 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3471 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3472 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3473
3474- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3475 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3476 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3477 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3478
3479- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3480 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3481
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003482C API
3483-----
3484
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003485- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3486 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003487
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003488- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3489 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3490 tp_as_number pointer.
3491
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003492- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3493 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3494 (SF #681367)
3495
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003496- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3497 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3498 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3499 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003500
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003501Tests
3502-----
3503
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003504- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003505 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3506 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3507 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3508 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3509 pydoc.)
3510
3511- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3512
3513- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003514
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003515Windows
3516-------
3517
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003518- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3519 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3520 time).
3521
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003522- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3523 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3524
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003525- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3526 release without strong cryptography.
3527
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003528- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003529 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003530
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003531- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3532 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3533
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003534Mac
3535---
3536
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003537- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3538 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003539
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003540- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3541 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3542 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003543
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003544- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3545 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003546
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003547- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3548 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3549 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3550 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003551
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003552- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003553 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3554 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3555 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003556
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003557
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003558What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003559=================================
3560
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003561*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003562
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003563Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003564--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003565
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003566- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3567
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003568- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3569 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003570 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003571 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003572 a different meaning than before.
3573
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003574- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003575 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003576 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003577
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003578- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003579 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003580 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003581
3582- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3583 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3584 and deallocation.
3585
3586- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3587 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3588
3589- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3590 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3591 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3592 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3593 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3594
3595- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3596 now detected by the garbage collector.
3597
3598- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3599 [SF bug 519621]
3600
3601- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3602 identifier.
3603
3604- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3605 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3606 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3607 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3608 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3609 [SF bug 563060]
3610
3611- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3612 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3613 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3614 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3615 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3616
3617- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3618 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3619 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3620
3621- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3622
3623- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3624 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3625 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3626 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3627 state of the slots would be lost.)
3628
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003629Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003630-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003631
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003632- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003633 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3634 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3635 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3636 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003637 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3638 Jython 2.1.
3639
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003640- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003641 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003642 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3643 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3644 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3645 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3646 these, see PEP 302.
3647
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003648- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3649 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3650 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3651
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003652- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3653 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3654 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3655
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003656- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3657 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3658 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3659
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003660- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3661 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3662 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3663 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3664 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3665 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3666 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3667 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3668 releases or implementations.
3669
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003670- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003671 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3672 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003673
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003674- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3675 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3676
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003677- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3678 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3679 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3680
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003681- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3682 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3683
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003684- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3685 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003686 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3687 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003688
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003689- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3690 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3691 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3692 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3693 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3694
3695 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3696 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3697 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3698 pattern.
3699
3700 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3701 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3702 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3703 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3704
3705 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3706 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3707 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3708 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3709 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3710 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3711
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003712- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3713 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3714 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3715 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3716 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3717 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3718 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3719 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003720
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003721- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3722 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3723 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3724 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3725 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003726 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3727 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3728 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3729 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3730 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3731 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3732 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003733
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003734- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3735 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3736
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003737- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3738 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3739 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3740 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3741 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3742 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3743 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3744 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3745 to Zack Weinberg!
3746
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003747- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3748 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3749 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3750 type. This has been fixed now.
3751
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003752- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3753 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3754 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3755
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003756- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3757 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3758 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3759 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3760 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3761 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3762 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3763 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003764 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003765
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003766- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3767 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3768 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003769
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003770- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3771 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3772 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3773 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3774 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3775 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3776 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3777 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003778 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003779 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3780 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3781
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003782- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3783 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3784 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3785 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3786 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3787 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3788 this.)
3789
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003790- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3791 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003792 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003793 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003794 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3795 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003796 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3797 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003798
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003799- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3800 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3801 currently running.
3802
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003803- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3804 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3805 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3806 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3807
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003808- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3809 as directory names.
3810
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003811- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3812 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3813
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003814- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3815 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3816
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003817- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003818 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3819 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003820
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003821- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3822 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3823 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3824 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3825 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3826
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003827- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3828 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3829 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3830 removed.
3831
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003832- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3833 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3834 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3835
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003836- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3837 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3838 to __debug__.
3839
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003840- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3841 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3842 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3843
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003844- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3845 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3846 deprecated now.
3847
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003848- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3849 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3850 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003851
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003852- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3853 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3854 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3855 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3856 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003857
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003858- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3859 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3860
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003861- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3862 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3863 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003864 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003865 is backward compatible.
3866
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003867- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3868 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3869 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3870 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3871 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3872
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003873- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3874 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3875 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3876 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3877 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3878 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003879
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003880- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3881 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3882
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003883- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3884 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3885
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003886- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3887 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3888 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3889 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3890 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3891
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003892- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3893 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3894 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3895
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003896- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003897 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3898
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003899- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3900 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3901 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003902
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003903- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3904 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3905
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003906- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3907 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3908 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3909
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003910- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3911
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003912Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003913-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003914
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003915- Added three operators to the operator module:
3916 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3917 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3918 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3919
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003920- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3921
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003922- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3923 archives.
3924
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003925- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3926 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3927 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3928
3929 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3930
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003931- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3932 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3933 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003934 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003935
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003936- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3937 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3938 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3939 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003940 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3941 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3942 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3943 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003944
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003945- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3946 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003947
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003948- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3949
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003950- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3951 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3952
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003953- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3954 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3955 supported.
3956
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003957- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3958
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003959- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3960 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003961
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003962- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3963 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3964
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003965- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3966
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003967- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3968 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3969
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003970- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3971 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3972 functions but callable type objects.
3973
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003974- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003975 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003976 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003977
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003978- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3979 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003980
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003981- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3982 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003983
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003984- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3985 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3986 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3987 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3988
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003989- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3990 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003991
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003992- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3993 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3994 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3995 and __imul__.
3996
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003997- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003998 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3999 is called.
4000
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004001- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4002 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4003 interpreter was compiled.
4004
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004005- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4006 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4007 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004008 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004009 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4010 1, not 2.
4011
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004012- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4013 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4014 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4015 limit.
4016
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004017- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4018 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4019 bug #623464.
4020
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004021- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4022 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4023 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4024 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4025
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004026Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004027-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004028
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004029- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4030
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004031- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4032 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4033 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4034 with Python 2.3a2.
4035
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004036- os.path exposes getctime.
4037
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004038- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004039 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004040 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004041 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004042 unit tests of floating point results.
4043
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004044- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4045 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4046 has been increased.
4047
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004048- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4049 executed.
4050
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004051- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4052 postinstallation script.
4053
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004054- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4055 test the current module.
4056
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004057- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004058 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4059 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4060 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4061 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4062
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004063- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004064 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004065 Ward's Optik package.
4066
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004067- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4068 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4069 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4070 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4071
4072- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4073 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004074 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004075
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004076- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4077 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4078 shelf are binary pickles.
4079
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004080- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4081 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4082
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004083- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4084 modules are iterators now.
4085
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004086- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4087 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4088 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4089 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4090 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4091 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004092
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004093- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4094 with their entity value.
4095
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004096- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4097
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004098- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4099 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004100
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004101- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4102 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004103 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004104
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004105- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4106 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4107 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4108 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4109 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4110 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4111 main():
4112
4113 import locale
4114 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4115
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004116- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4117 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4118
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004119- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4120 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4121 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4122 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4123 to the new standard.
4124
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004125- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4126 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4127 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4128 an extension to the database.
4129
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004130- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4131 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4132 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4133 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004134 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004135
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004136- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004137 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004138
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004139- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4140 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4141 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4142 bounded integers.
4143
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004144- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4145 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4146 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4147 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4148 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4149 in existence.
4150
4151 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4152 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4153 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4154 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4155 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4156 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4157
4158 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4159 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4160 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4161 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4162
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004163- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4164 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4165 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4166
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004167- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4168
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004169- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4170 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4171 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4172 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4173
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004174- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4175 argument.
4176
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004177- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4178 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4179 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4180 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4181 [SF patch 560794].
4182
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004183- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4184 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4185 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004186 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4187 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4188 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004189
4190- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4191 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004192
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004193- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4194 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4195 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4196 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004197
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004198- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4199 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4200 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4201 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4202 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4203
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004204- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004205
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004206- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4207
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004208- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4209 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4210 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4211 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4212 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4213 identical to None.
4214
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004215- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4216 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4217 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4218 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4219 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4220 results now.
4221
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004222- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4223 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4224
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004225- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4226 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4227 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4228 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4229 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4230 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4231 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4232 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4233
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004234- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4235
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004236- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4237 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4238
4239- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4240 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4241 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4242 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4243 and other systems.
4244
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004245- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4246 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4247 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4248 UTF-16 is a 2-byte encoding and the C lib's line reading APIs don't
Marc-André Lemburg4179a012002-04-05 12:15:05 +00004249 work well with these.
4250
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004251- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4252
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004253- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004254 connections.
4255
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004256- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4257 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4258 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4259
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004260- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4261 sets
4262
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004263- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4264 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4265 name.
4266
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004267- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4268 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4269 passed in.
4270
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004271- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004272 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004273 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4274 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004275
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004276- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4277
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004278- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4279
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004280- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4281 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4282 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4283
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004284- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4285 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4286 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4287 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004288 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004289
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004290- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004291 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004292 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004293
4294- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4295 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4296 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4297
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004298- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004299 the value of its expression argument.
4300
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004301- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4302 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4303 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4304
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004305- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4306 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4307 skipstone browser was included.
4308
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004309- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4310 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4311
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004312Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004313-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004314
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004315- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4316 names in addition to accepting file names.
4317
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004318- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4319 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4320 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4321 still used and useful.)
4322
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004323- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4324 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4325 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4326 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004327
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004328- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4329 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4330 the generated binary.
4331
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004332Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004333-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004334
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004335- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4336
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004337- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4338 except in the hands of experts.
4339
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004340- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004341 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4342 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4343 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004344
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004345- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4346 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4347 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4348 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4349 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4350 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4351 builds.
4352
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004353- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4354 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4355 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4356 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4357 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4358 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4359 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4360 new type.
4361
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004362- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004363
4364 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4365 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4366 positive infinities.
4367
4368 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4369 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4370 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4371 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4372 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4373 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4374 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4375
4376 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4377
4378 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4379
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004380- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4381 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4382 size of the executable.
4383
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004384- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4385 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4386 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4387 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004388
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004389- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4390
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004391- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4392 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4393 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004394
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004395- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4396 well as Unix.
4397
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004398- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4399 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4400 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4401 modules in the README file for details.
4402
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004403C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004404-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004405
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004406- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4407 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004408 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004409 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004410 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004411
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004412- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4413 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4414 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4415 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4416 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4417 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004418 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004419 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4420 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4421 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4422 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4423 aligned.)
4424
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004425- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4426 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4427 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4428
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004429- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4430 level.
4431
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004432- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4433 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4434 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4435 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4436 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4437
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004438- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4439 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4440 code.
4441
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004442- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4443 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4444 adjusting for negative indices.
4445
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004446- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4447 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4448 object.
4449
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004450- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4451 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4452 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4453
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004454- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4455 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004456
4457- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4458
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004459- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4460 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4461 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4462 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4463
4464- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4465
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004466- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004467
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004468- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004469 without going through the buffer API.
4470
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004471- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004472
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004473- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4474 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4475 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4476 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4477
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004478- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4479 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4480
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004481- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004482 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4483
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004484New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004485-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004486
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004487- OpenVMS is now supported.
4488
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004489- AtheOS is now supported.
4490
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004491- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4492
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004493- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4494
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004495Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004496-----
4497
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004498- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4499 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4500 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004501
4502Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004503-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004504
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004505- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4506 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4507 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4508 bugs.
4509 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004510 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004511 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4512 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004513 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004514
4515- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004516 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004517
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004518- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4519 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4520
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004521- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4522 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004523 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004524 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4525
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004526- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4527 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4528 use files" uninstall option).
4529
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004530- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4531
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004532- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4533 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4534
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004535- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4536 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4537 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4538
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004539- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4540 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4541 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4542 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4543 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004544 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4545 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4546 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004547
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004548- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004549 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004550 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4551 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4552 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4553 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4554 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4555 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4556 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4557 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4558 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4559 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4560 work around.
4561
4562- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4563 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4564 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4565 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4566 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4567 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4568 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4569 specified with O_CREAT too).
4570
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004571Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004572----
4573
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004574- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004575
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004576- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4577 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4578 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4579
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004580- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4581 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4582 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4583
4584- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4585 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4586 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4587 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4588 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4589 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4590 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4591 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004592
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004593- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4594 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4595 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004596
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004597- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4598 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4599 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4600 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4601 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004602
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004603- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4604 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4605 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004606
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004607- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4608 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004609
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004610- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4611 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4612 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4613 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4614 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004615
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004616- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4617 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4618 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4619
4620- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4621 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4622 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004623
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004624- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4625 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4626 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4627 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004628 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004629
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004630- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4631 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004632
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004633- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4634 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004635
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004636- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004637 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004638 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4639 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004640
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004641
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004642What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004643===============================
4644
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004645*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4646
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004647Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004648--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004649
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004650- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4651 with a custom metaclass.
4652
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004653Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004654-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004655
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004656- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4657 are proxies.
4658
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004659Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004660-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004661
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004662- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4663 very short strings.
4664
4665- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4666 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4667 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4668 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4669 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4670
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004671Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004672-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004673
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004674- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4675 close or delete time).
4676
4677- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4678 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4679
4680- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4681
4682- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004683 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004684
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004685Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004686-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004687
4688Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004689-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004690
4691C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004692-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004693
4694New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004695-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004696
4697Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004698-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004699
4700Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004701-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004702
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004703- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4704
4705- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4706 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4707
4708- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4709 deleted at process exit time.
4710
4711- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4712 in backslash.
4713
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004714Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004715----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004716
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004717- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4718 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4719 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4720
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004721
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004722What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004723===========================
4724
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004725*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4726
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004727Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004728--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004729
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004730- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4731 been extensively updated. See
4732
4733 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4734
4735 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4736
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004737- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4738 deleted!
4739
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004740- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4741 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4742 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4743 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4744 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4745
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004746- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4747
4748 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4749 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4750
4751 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4752 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4753 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4754 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4755 supported anyway.
4756
4757 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4758 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4759
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004760- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4761 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4762 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4763 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4764 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004765
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004766- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4767 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4768 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4769
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004770Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004771-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004772
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004773- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4774 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4775 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4776 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4777 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4778 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004779 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4780 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4781 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4782 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004783
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004784- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4785 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4786 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4787
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004788Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004789-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004790
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004791- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4792
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004793Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004794-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004795
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004796- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4797 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4798 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4799 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4800 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4801 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4802
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004803- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4804
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004805- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4806
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004807- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4808
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004809- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4810 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4811 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4812
4813- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4814
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004815Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004816-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004817
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004818- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4819 off a search on Google.
4820
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004821Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004822-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004823
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004824- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4825 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4826 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4827 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4828 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4829 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4830 other platforms should do likewise.
4831
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004832- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4833 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4834 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4835
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004836C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004837-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004838
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004839- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4840 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4841 producing key-value pairs.
4842
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004843- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004844 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004845 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4846 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4847 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4848 previously went unchallenged.
4849
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004850New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004851-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004852
4853Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004854-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004855
4856Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004857-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004858
4859Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004860----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004861
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004862- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4863 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004864
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004865- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4866 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4867 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4868 home.
4869
4870
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004871What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004872===========================
4873
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004874*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4875
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004876Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004877--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004878
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004879- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4880 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004881
4882 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004883 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004884
4885 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4886 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004887 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004888 This needs to be documented.
4889
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004890- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4891 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4892
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004893- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4894 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4895 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4896
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004897- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4898 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4899
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004900- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4901 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4902 class forbids it).
4903
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004904- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4905 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4906 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4907
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004908- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4909
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004910Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004911-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004912
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004913- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4914 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004915 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004916
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004917- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4918 (like 1 + '').
4919
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004920Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004921-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004922
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004923- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4924 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4925 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4926 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004927 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004928 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4929
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004930- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4931 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4932 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4933 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4934
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004935- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4936 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004937 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4938 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4939 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004940
4941- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4942 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004943
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004944- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4945 bytes on its input.
4946
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004947Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004948-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004949
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004950- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004951 convenience function.
4952
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004953- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4954 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4955 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004956 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4957 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4958 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4959 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4960 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4961 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004962
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004963- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4964 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4965 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4966 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4967
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004968- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4969 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4970 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4971
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004972- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4973 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4974 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4975 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4976
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004977- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4978 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004979 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004980 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4981 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4982 new -l and -e options.
4983
4984- statcache is now deprecated.
4985
4986- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4987 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004988 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004989 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4990 time properly taken into account.
4991
4992- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4993 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4994 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4995 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4996
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004997Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004998-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004999
5000Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005001-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005002
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005003- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5004 is built with libdb3 if available.
5005
5006- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5007
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005008C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005009-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005010
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005011- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5012 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5013 PySequence_Size().
5014
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005015- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5016
5017- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5018 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5019 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5020
5021- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5022 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5023
5024- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5025 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5026
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005027New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005028-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005029
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005030- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5031 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5032
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005033- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5034 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5035
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005036- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5037
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005038Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005039-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005040
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005041- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5042 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5043
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005044Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005045-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005046
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005047Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005048----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005049
5050- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5051 removed completely in the next release.
5052
5053- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5054 OSX.
5055
5056- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5057 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5058
5059- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5060
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005061
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005062What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005063===========================
5064
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005065*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5066
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005067Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005068--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005069
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005070- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005071 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005072 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005073 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5074 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005075 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5076 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005077 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5078 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005079
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005080- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5081 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5082
5083- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5084 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5085
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005086Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005087-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005088
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005089- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5090 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5091 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5092 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5093 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5094 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5095 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5096 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5097
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005098- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5099 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5100 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5101 example).
5102
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005103- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005104 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005105 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005106 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005107
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005108- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5109 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5110 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005111 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005112
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005113- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5114 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5115 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5116 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5117 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5118 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5119
5120 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5121
5122 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5123
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005124Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005125-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005126
5127- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5128
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005129- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5130
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005131- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5132 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005133
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005134- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5135 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5136 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5137 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5138 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5139 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005140 attributes.
5141
5142- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5143 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5144 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005145
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005146- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5147 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5148 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005149
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005150- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5151 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5152 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005153 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5154 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5155
5156- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5157 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005158
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005159Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005160-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005161
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005162- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5163 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5164
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005165- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5166 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5167 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5168 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5169
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005170- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5171 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5172 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5173 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5174
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005175 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5176 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5177 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5178 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5179 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5180 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5181 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5182 without losing information).
5183
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005184- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005185 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5186 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5187 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5188 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5189 module).
5190
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005191 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005192 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5193 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5194 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5195 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005196
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005197- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005198 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5199 encoding.
5200
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005201- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5202 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5203
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005204- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005205 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5206
5207- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5208 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5209 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5210 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5211
5212- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5213
5214- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5215 ON, and OFF.
5216
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005217- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5218 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5219
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005220Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005221-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005222
5223- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5224 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5225 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005226
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005227- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5228 been added: -X and -E.
5229
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005230Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005231-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005232
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005233- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5234 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5235
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005236C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005237-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005238
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005239- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5240 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5241 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5242 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5243 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5244
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005245- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5246 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5247 as long) arguments.
5248
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005249- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5250 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5251 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5252 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5253 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5254 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5255
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005256- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5257 input.
5258
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005259New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005260-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005261
5262Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005263-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005264
5265Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005266-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005267
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005268- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5269 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5270 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5271
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005272- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5273 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5274 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005275 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005276
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005277 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5278 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5279 import signal
5280 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005281
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005282 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005283 while 1:
5284 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005285 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005286 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5287 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5288 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5289 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005290
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005291
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005292What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5293===========================
5294
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005295*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5296
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005297Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005298--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005299
5300- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5301 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5302 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5303
5304- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5305 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5306 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5307 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5308 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5309 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5310 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005311
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005312- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005313 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005314 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5315 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5316 associate a docstring with a property.
5317
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005318- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5319 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5320 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5321 other built-in object types.
5322
5323- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5324 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5325 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5326 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5327 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5328
5329- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5330 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5331
5332- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5333 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005334 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005335 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5336 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5337 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5338 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5339 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5340
5341- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5342 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5343 class.
5344
5345- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5346 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5347 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5348 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5349
5350- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5351 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5352 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5353 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5354
5355- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5356 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5357
5358- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5359 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5360 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5361 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5362 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005363 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005364 with the same value as s.
5365
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005366- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5367
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005368Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005369----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005370
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005371- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5372
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005373- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5374 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5375 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5376 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5377 objects.
5378
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005379- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5380 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005381 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5382 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5383
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005384- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5385 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5386 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5387
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005388Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005389-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005390
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005391- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5392 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5393 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5394 by the instances.
5395
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005396- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5397 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5398 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5399
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005400- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5401 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5402 before the entire comparison is complete.
5403
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005404- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5405 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5406 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5407
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005408- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5409 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5410 getwriter().
5411
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005412- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5413 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5414
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005415- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005416 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5417 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5418
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005419- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5420 iterable object.
5421
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005422- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5423 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005424
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005425- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5426 authentication.
5427
5428- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5429 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005430
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005431- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005432 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5433 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5434 a sample driver.)
5435
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005436Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005437-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005438
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005439- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5440 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5441 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5442 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5443 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5444 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5445 kernel has large file support.
5446
5447- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5448 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5449 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5450 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5451 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5452
5453- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5454 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5455 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5456
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005457C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005458-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005459
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005460- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5461 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5462
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005463New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005464-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005465
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005466- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5467 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5468
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005469Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005470-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005471
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005472- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5473 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5474 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5475 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5476 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5477
5478- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5479 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5480 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5481 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5482
5483- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5484 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5485
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005486Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005487-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005488
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005489- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005490 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5491 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005492
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005493
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005494What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5495===========================
5496
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005497*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5498
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005499Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005500----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005501
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005502- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5503 big to represent as a C double.
5504
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005505- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5506 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5507 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5508 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5509 restriction).
5510
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005511- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5512 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5513 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5514 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5515 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5516
5517 >>> dir([])
5518 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5519 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5520 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5521 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5522 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5523 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5524 'reverse', 'sort']
5525
5526 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5527
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005528- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005529 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5530 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5531 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5532 OverflowError exception.
5533
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005534- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005535 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005536 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5537 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5538 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5539 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5540 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005541 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005542 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5543 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5544
5545 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5546 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5547 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5548 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005549
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005550- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005551 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5552 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5553 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5554 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5555 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5556 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5557 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5558 once it is created.
5559
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005560- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5561 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5562 (key, value) pairs.
5563
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005564- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005565 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5566 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5567
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005568- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5569 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5570 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5571 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5572 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005573
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005574- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005575 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5576 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5577
5578 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5579
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005580- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005581 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5582
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005583Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005584-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005585
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005586- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005587 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5588 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005589
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005590- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5591 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5592 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5593 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5594 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5595 in this area anymore).
5596
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005597- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5598 threading.Timer.
5599
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005600- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5601 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5602
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005603- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005604 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5605
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005606- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005607 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5608 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5609 converted to Python longs.
5610
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005611- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005612 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5613
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005614- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5615 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5616 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5617
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005618Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005619-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005620
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005621- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5622 division operators as per PEP 238.
5623
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005624Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005625-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005626
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005627- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5628 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5629 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5630 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5631
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005632C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005633-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005634
5635- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005636
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005637- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5638 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005639 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005640
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005641 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5642 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005643 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005644 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005645
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005646- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005647 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5648 module:
5649
5650 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005651
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005652 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5653 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005654
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005655 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5656 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005657
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005658 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5659
5660 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5661
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005662- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005663 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5664 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5665 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005666
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005667New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005668-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005669
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005670- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5671 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5672 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5673 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5674 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005675
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005676Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005677-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005678
5679Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005680-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005681
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005682- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5683 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5684 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5685 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005686 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5687 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5688 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5689 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5690 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005691
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005692- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005693 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5694
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005695
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005696What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5697===========================
5698
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005699*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5700
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005701Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005702-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005703
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005704- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5705 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5706
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005707- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5708 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5709 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005710
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005711- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5712 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5713 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5714 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005715
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005716- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5717
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005718- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005719
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005720Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005721-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005722
5723- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005724 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005725 the module docstring for details.
5726
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005727Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005728-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005729
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005730- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005731 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5732 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5733 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005734
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005735- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5736 Nick Mathewson.
5737
5738Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005739----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005740
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005741- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5742 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5743 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5744 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5745 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5746 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5747 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5748 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5749
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005750- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5751 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5752 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5753 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5754
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005755- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5756 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5757 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5758 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5759 come a long way).
5760
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005761- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5762 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5763 write filters for these warnings).
5764
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005765- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5766 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5767 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5768 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5769 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5770
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005771- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5772 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5773 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5774 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5775 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5776 older distribution.
5777
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005778Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005779-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005780
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005781- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5782 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005783 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005784
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005785- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5786 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5787 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5788
5789- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5790
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005791- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5792
5793- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5794
5795- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5796
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005797- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005798
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005799- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5800
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005801New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005802-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005803
5804C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005805-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005806
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005807- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5808 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5809 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5810 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5811 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5812 against buffer overruns.
5813
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005814- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005815 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5816 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005817 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5818 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5819 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5820
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005821- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5822 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5823 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5824 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5825 deprecated.
5826
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005827Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005828-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005829
5830- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5831 relevant is found.
5832
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005833
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005834What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005835===========================
5836
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005837*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5838
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005839Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005840----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005841
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005842- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5843 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5844 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5845 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5846 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5847 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5848 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5849 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005850 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005851 repaired.
5852
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005853- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005854 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005855 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5856 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5857 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5858 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5859 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5860 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5861 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5862 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5863
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005864- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5865 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5866 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5867 leading BMO character).
5868
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005869- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5870 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5871 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5872
5873 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5874 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5875 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005876
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005877 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5878 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5879 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5880 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5881 for various simple to use conversions.
5882
5883 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5884 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5885
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005886 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5887 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5888 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5889 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5890 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5891 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5892 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5893 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5894 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5895 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5896 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5897 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5898 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5899 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5900 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005901
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005902- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5903 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5904 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005905 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005906 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005907
5908 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005909 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5910 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5911 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5912 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5913 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005914 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5915 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005916
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005917 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5918 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5919 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005920 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005921
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005922- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5923 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5924 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5925 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5926 floating arithmetic,
5927
5928 x = 9007199254740992.0
5929 print long(x)
5930
5931 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5932 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5933 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5934 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5935 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5936 functions are of good quality).
5937
5938 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5939 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5940 algorithms to break.
5941
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005942- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5943 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5944 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5945 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5946 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5947 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5948 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5949 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5950 order.
5951
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005952- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5953 operation along the most common code paths.
5954
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005955- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5956 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5957
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005958- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5959 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5960 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5961 {}.update(UserDict())
5962
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005963- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5964 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5965 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5966 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5967 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5968 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5969 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5970 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5971
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005972- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005973 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005974
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005975 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005976 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5977 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005978 join() method of strings
5979 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005980 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5981 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005982 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005983 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005984
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005985- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5986 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5987
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005988- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5989 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5990
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005991- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5992 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5993 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5994 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5995
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005996- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5997 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005998 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005999 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6000 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006001
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006002- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6003
6004
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006005Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006006-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006007
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006008- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006009 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006010 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6011 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6012
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006013- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6014 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6015
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006016- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6017 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6018 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6019 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6020
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006021- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6022 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6023 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6024
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006025- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6026
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006027- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6028
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006029- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6030 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6031 that are still imported into string.py).
6032
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006033- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6034
6035- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6036 Now it does.
6037
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006038- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6039
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006040- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6041 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6042 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6043 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6044 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006045 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6046 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006047
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006048- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6049 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6050 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6051 'help(object)'.
6052
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006053Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006054-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006055
6056- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006057 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006058 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6059 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6060
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006061- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006062 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6063 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006064
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006065C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006066-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006067
6068- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6069 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006070
6071----
6072
6073**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**